Govind Ram vs State of Haryana and anr.

S.S. Sodhi, J. (Oral)

The matter here arises from proceedings under Section 193 of the Indian Penal Code, which were initiated against the petitioner as far back as 1976 on the allegation that he had falsely denied his signatures on an arbitration agreement. In these proceedings, the first appearance of the petitioner before the Court was on November 30, 1976. The matter was then brought to this Court by the petitioner and the proceedings remained stayed from December 13, 1976 to March 24, 1979. Thereafter, a large number of bearings took place before the trial Court without any substantial progress. From some interim order, a revision petition was again filed in this Court, which necessitated further stay of proceedings but this time only for a period of about three months from March 11, 1982 to May 5, 1982.

When the proceedings were again taken up by the trial Court, the petitioner challenged the maintainability of proceedings under Section 340 of the Code of Criminal Procedure against him in a revision which was filed before the Sessions Judge on January 1, 1983, whereby the order of the trial Magistrate of December 3, 1982 was challenged. This order was upheld by the Sessions Judge on September 24, 1984. Parties were then directed to appear before the Chief Judicial Magistrate on October 6, 1984. Charge was famed against the petitioner on July 3, 1985 and from that date till the filing of the present petition in March, 1987, as many as eight adjournments were granted to the prosecution to adduce evidence. When pointedly asked to show any reason for nonexamination of the prosecution witnesses which could be fastened upon the petitioner, counsel for the State could point to only one date where the case had to be adjourned and that too because a file was missing. In other words, on at least seven dates when the case was fixed for prosecution evidence, no evidence was produced and there is no justifiable cause on record to account for it.

Keeping in view the nature of the charge against the petitioner and the inordinately long time that this matter has been pending in Court and also the fact that no prosecution evidence whatsoever has been produced to date despite more than seven adjournments having been granted for this purpose, it would clearly not be in the interest of justice to allow the proceedings against the petitioner to continue any further. In this view of the matter, the proceedings against the petitioner are hereby quashed and this petition is thus accepted.