Allahabad High Court: Applicant filed an application under Section 482 of Criminal Procedure Code which was contemplated by Dinesh Kumar Singh, J. where the prayer was to quash the Charges under certain Sections of Penal Code, 1860.
The applicant was charged under Sections 366, 376, 328, 506, 406 of IPC, in which the Chief Judicial Magistrate had taken cognizance. Santosh Yadav, counsel for the applicant argued that the accused was falsely implicated by the respondent-complainant who was the mother of the victim, the main reason cited by the counsel behind such baseless complaint was alleged desire to the victim to marry applicant. The counsel submitted the statements of the complainant and highlighted that she had stated that ‘she suspected the involvement of accused in the instant case.’ Another issue highlighted was alleged kidnapping by the accused-applicant, it was submitted that the victim was never abducted as she herself went to the police station to register the complaint. The attention of the Court was also drawn towards the other statement of the victim, recorded under Section 161 of CrPC. where the allegation of rape had been made upon the accused applicant who after committing rape had given assurance to marry her and subsequently when she asked to marry he committed assault and refused to marry. In addition to these aforementioned evidences the applicant submitted an injury report, where it was stated that no marks to injury were found on the victim. Lastly, it was submitted by the learned counsel for the applicant that many facts were ignored by the Investigating Officer and the charge-sheet had been submitted in a routine manner, which was nothing but an abuse of the process of Court and in the interest of justice, the charge sheet deserved to be quashed.
Bhaiya Ghanshyam Singh, Advocate General for the state, had vehemently opposed the prayer for quashing of the charge- sheet and had stated that the evidence which was collected by the Investigating Officer cannot be looked into in this Application under Section 482 CrPC as the same will be required during the trial. It was submitted that High Court had no jurisdiction to appreciate the evidence of the proceedings under Section 482 of CrPC. “because whether there are contradictions or/and inconsistencies in the statements of the witnesses is essentially an issue relating to appreciation of evidence and the same can be gone into by the Judicial Magistrate during trial when the entire evidence is adduced by the parties.”
The Court held that the Investigating Officer had recorded the statements of as many as five witnesses have submitted the charge-sheet. It further opined that “the truthfulness of the statements of the witnesses cannot be scrutinized in Application under Section 482 CrPC” The Court relied upon the Judgment in Anurag Singh v. Chhatisgarh, 2019 SCC OnLine SC 509, where the Supreme Court had held that ‘position of law, was apparent that whether accused wanted to marry the victim right from very beginning or not and whether consent given by victim for sexual intercourse was a free-consent or not, was a subject matter of evidence, which is only possible to be decided after trial.’
Hence, the prayer for quashing the FIR was refused and the application was dismissed.[Kamal Pal v. State of U.P., 2019 SCC OnLine All 3539, decided on 25-09-2019]
