Sanjeev Krishna Tripathi and Another vs State of Uttaranchal and Another

Servesh Kumar Gupta, J.—By way of this criminal miscellaneous application, the order of cognizance dated 4.8.2005 passed by the Judicial Magistrate, Pithoragarh in criminal complaint case No. 345/2005 titled as Nirmal Singh Basera v. Shardul Vikram Gupta and Ors. is in question. The said complaint was filed by Nirmal Singh Baseda against Shardul Vikram Gupt, who is the Chief Editor of daily newspaper "AAJ" having his head office and Press at Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. He is the Director of his publication too. Besides Sri Shardul Gupt, three other persons were also arraigned as accused. Second is Roshan Lal, who is the Bureau Chief having his office at Pithoragarh town itself of the same daily newspaper. Third accused is Devendra Kumar, who is the local corRespondent based at Pithoragarh and fourth one is Sanjeev Krishan Tripathi, who is said to be the General Manager of the said newspaper, as indicated in paragraph 10 of the petition.

The background facts appear to be that Nirmal Singh Basera is a local students'' leader at Pithoragarh. He resides at Link Road there and happened to be the General Secretary of Students'' Union. A news in daily newspaper ''AAJ'' dated 16.5.2005 was published which allegedly exposed the complainant being entangled in a compromising condition with some opposite sex. The photocopy of the said publication is available on the record. Having a look upon that, nowhere the name of this complainant is published. This news item only implicates a person adverting that a student leader was caught with a girl openly in a compromising position by SubInspector Neeraj Kumar. The complainant took this news item for himself and feeling aggrieved, filed a complaint against the applicants and other two persons, as named above. The complainant issued a notice to the applicants whereagainst another publication was made on 26.5.2005 expressing "sorry" for the said derogatory publication.

It is also pertinent to mention that Respondent No. 2 Nirmal Singh Basera has been sufficiently served through his father but none turns up on his behalf to oppose this petition.

On filing the petition in the Court, further proceedings of the entire criminal complaint case were stayed by order-dated 10.5.2006.

Having heard the learned Counsel of the applicants and in view of the facts stated aforesaid, this Court is also of the view that No. offence u/s 500 Indian Penal Code is made out, either against the applicants or rest of the persons named above, within the facts as disclosed in the complaint. So, this way this complaint filed by Nirmal Singh Basera is baseless and the Magistrate ought not to have taken any cognizance merely on the ground of ex parte statement of Sri Basera u/s 200 Code of Criminal Procedure in support of the complaint and his one witness u/s 202 Code of Criminal Procedure This is a sheer abuse of process of law and this Court will not allow such complaint to be encouraged. The complaint as well as the order of cognizance dated 4.8.2005 are liable to be quashed.

For the reasons recorded above, this petition is allowed. The complaint as well as the summoning order dated 4.8.2005 are quashed.