Balbir Kumar Verma vs State of Punjab and ors :

J. B. Garg, J.—Balbir Kumar Verma, Distributor of Indane, Mandi Darapur Urmar Tanda, District Hoshiarpur, has moved the present petition under section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and has prayed that FIR No. 96 of 1061990 of Police Station Tanda for offence under Section 419/420 of the Indian Penal Code read with Section 7 of the Essential Commodities Act, 1955, be quashed.

Briefly, the allegations against Balbir Kumar Verma, the Cooking Gas Dealer, are that on 191989, the complainant paid a sum of Rs. 2500/ to the aforesaid dealer and then he was able to secure connection of cooking gas and that now he came to know that in reality this connection was in the name of Mohan Singh, resident of Anaj Mandi, Tanda.

On behalf of the petitioner, it has been urged that the petitioner dealer has been falsely implicated by Shri Chander Kailash Sharma Sub Inspector of Police, with the help of his gunman Mr. Joshi and all this was at the instance of one Ashok Kumar a rival of the petitioner with whom he had long standing disputes. There is an inordinate delay in this complaint inasmuch as if the usual prescribed rate for getting connection was Rs. 500/ and if the dealer was demanding Rs. 2500/ from Kuljit Singh complainant it was expected that Kuljit Singh would have reported the matter and got arranged a kind of trap through respondent No. 3 or any other appropriate police officer. The securing of a gas connection on payment of Rs. 2500/ allegedly on 191989 and then reporting the matter after more than nine months on 1061990 itself does not inspire any confidence whatsoever. The learned counsel for the respondent No. 2 has referred to Tara Singh and another v. The State of Punjab. J.T. 1991(5) SC 40 but that was a case under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and the delay of a few hours in lodging the FIR was not considered a circumstance which went against the complainant and obviously the facts and circumstances were altogether different.

Another important feature of this case is that the Consumer No. 0530 was in the name of Mohan Singh a resident of Anaj Mandi Tanda. It could not be ruled out that Mohan Singh was never a bonafide consumer of cooking gas inasmuch as the correspondence which emanated from the office of Indian Oil Corporation, Ltd, Sector 8C, Chandigarh (Annexure P1) shows that the head office of the Indian Oil Corporation had issued a cooking gas connection in favour of Mohan Singh and that too on the recommendation of M/s Ram Chandra and Sons. Cooking Gas Agents of Chandigarh on account of the transfer of Mohan Singh from Chandigarh to Tanda. Mohan Singh was never a complainant.

In view of the reasons briefly discussed above, there appeals to be no justification for launching prosecution against Balbir Kumar Verma and that too after an inordinate delay, referred to above. The conclusion is that the petition is accepted and the FIR and the subsequent proceedings, in question. are hereby quashed.