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Judgment
7 paragraphs · 443 wordsI.S. Tiwana, J.
As a result of the police report under Section 173, Code of Criminal Procedure, the petitioner is sought to be tried for the following charges framed by the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, vide order dated 6th November, 1984 (Annexure P1) :
"(i) That for the period from 29.4.1965 to 19.3.1981 in the area of Shishwala you being a Sarpanch of the village and in that capacity you committed criminal breach of trust in respect of the amount of Rs. 6500/ belonging to the Gram Panchayat Shiswala.
(ii) Similarly you also committed criminal breach of trust in respect of the amount of Rs. 4000/ which was received as a grant for construction of Harijan Chopal by the Gram Panchayat on 31.3.1971, from Panchayat Samiti, Hissar and you thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 409 IPC and within my cognizance."
The contention of the learned Counsel for the petitioner is that besides the charge at No. (i) above being totally vague and indefinite, as it contains no particulars of the misappropriated amounts or the dates of their entrustment to the petitioner, the continuation of the proceedings would be nothing but abuse of process of the Court because of the timelag which had essentially elapsed by the time the abovenoted charges were framed. He also maintains that even after the framing of these charges not a single witness has been produced on behalf of the prosecution for the last about three years to substantiate the same.
Having heard the learned Counsel for the petitioner I find him to be wholly right. A bare reading of the charge at No. (i) indicates that the court never felt sure as to on which date the alleged misappropriated amounts were entrusted to the petitioner. It is again not sure whether the chart at (ii) forms part of the charge at No. (i) because the allegedly misappropriated amount of Rs. 4,000/ is stated to have been entrusted to the petitioners on 31st March, 1971, i.e., the date which falls within the two dates, i.e., 29th April, 1965 and 29th March, 1981 mentioned in the charge at (i). I am further satisfied that besides all this it would be impossible for the petitioner to dig out the old records which in normal cases are to be in possession of the Panchayat to substantiate his defence or, in other words, to prove his innocence. I, therefore, quash the proceedings against the petitioner. However, for clarity''s sake it is mentioned here that this order would not in any way absolve the petitioner from any civil liability in case the respondentauthorities find any against him.
JUDGMENT accordingly.