Babu Lal vs State of Haryana

J.B. Garg, J.

Babu Lal, Jagdish Prasad, Banarsi Dass, Tilak Raj, Darshan Singh and Ved Parkash of Saharanpur and Vinod Kumar and Krishan Kumar of Dehradun have come forward and moved the present petition under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure challenging FIR No. 354 dated 171984 under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code registered at Police Station City, Yamuna Nagar and the subsequent proceedings arising therefrom.

Briefly, the grievance of the eight petitioners is that they have been erroneously roped in and even after the presentation of the challan no proceedings whatsoever have been held in the trial Court in the years 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987 and even thereafter. The occurrence related to a period 21/2 months prior to 171984. It was further averred that Satpal and Rajinder Kumar came to Jarnail Singh a resident of Radaur and told him that as against the genuine currency notes of Rs. 60,000/ the two accused could give fake currency notes to the tune of rupees one lac, in lieu thereof. The complainant is called to have invested Rs., 60,000/ at one stage on the surety of Satpal but his promise was never fulfilled though some dates were taken for this purpose such as 1651984, etc. at places like Rishikesh in Uttar Pradesh and at Sidharath Hotel, Delhi etc.

The learned counsel for the petitioners has pointedout that Satpal and Rajinder Kumar residents of village Chamori whose names have been given in the first para of the FIR have not been arraigned as accused and the present petitioner were totally strangers to the dispute between the aforesaid two persons and the complainant. This factual position could not be contradicted by the learned counsel for the State of Haryana.

The learned counsel for the petitioners has further argued that the story appears to be highly improvable and no person was expected to hand over genuine currency notes of Rs. 60,000/ in lieu of the fake currency notes of Rs. 1,00,000/ No recovery of fake currency notes was made in the entire case at the instance of any of the accused either within the territorial jurisdiction of this Court or even in Uttar Pradesh or New Delhi.

It may be further interesting to note that there is an affidavit of jarnail Singh complainant that he had no grievance against all of these accused.

The learned counsel for the petitioners has referred to Municipal Corporation of Delhi v. Ram Kishan Rohtagi and others, 1983(1) Recent Criminal Reports 73 (SC) : AIR 1983 SC 67 wherein it has been observed that if the allegations made in the complaint are inherently improbable, there may not be sufficient justification for proceedings against the accused. It is a case where the chances of conviction are really bleak. The accused had been coming to the Court for the last several years and the trial did not take the required shape. In the circumstances of the case, the present petition is accepted and the FIR in question and the subsequent proceeding arising therefrom are hereby quashed.