“State Machinery Being Misused For Ulterior Motives & For Causing Harassment”: SC Imposes 5L Costs While Quashing FIR U/S 498A IPC
|The Supreme Court imposed costs of Rupees Five Lakhs while quashing an FIR for the offence under Section 498A of the IPC.
The Court deprecated the practice of “the state machinery being misused for ulterior motives and for causing harassment to the other side” and thus imposed costs in order to compensate the appellant.
Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra observed, “Without going into these statutory provisions and the case laws relied upon by the parties, we are convinced that the impugned proceedings are nothing but an abuse of the process of law…The respondent No.3 was a gazetted Police Officer at the relevant time and was also well aware of the laws, in particular the Cr.P.C. and the provisions thereto. Neither the complainant nor the victim entered the witness box before the Hisar Court allowing total wastage of the valuable time of the Court and the investigating agency.”
AOR Rishi Malhotra represented the appellant, while Sr. Advocates Manish Singhvi and Uday Gupta appeared for the respondents.
The husband had challenged several FIRs filed against him under Sections 498A, 406, 384, 420, and 120(B) of the IPC in two States by his wife and father-in-law. The first FIR was registered in Hisar by the father of the wife, who at that time was posted as the Deputy Superintendent of Police in Rajasthan. The second one was registered in Udaipur by the wife. In the third FIR, the family members of the husband were also roped in.
The husband argued that the Udaipur FIR was a second complaint on the same allegations made at Hisar, Haryana, within weeks of the initial complaint. He contended that this amounted to an abuse of process and sought the quashing of the Udaipur FIR.
The Bench criticised the conduct of the wife and her father for filing successive complaints in different jurisdictions, for abusing their positions, and for wasting the valuable time of the Court.
The Supreme Court noted, “Merely because she (wife) was a Police Officer, she first managed to get an FIR lodged at Hisar through her father, and thereafter she moved to her hometown at Udaipur and got another complaint lodged by her father within a week.”
Accordingly, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal.
Cause Title: Parteek Bansal v. State Of Rajasthan & Ors. (Neutral Citation: 2024 INSC 324)
Appearance:
Appellant: AOR Rishi Malhotra; Advocates Jaydip Pati and Utkarsh Singh
Respondents: Sr. Advocates Manish Singhvi and Uday Gupta; AOR D. K. Devesh and Hiren Dasan; Advocates Apurv Singhvi, Anuj Gupta, Shailesh Joshi, Shivani Lal, Gaurav Dave, M. K. Tripathi, Sanam Singh, Harish Dasan, Rajiv Ranjan, Rajeev Kumar Gupta and Yogamaya M. G.