Bechu Kurian Thomas, J
“A significant factor in this backlog (of cases) is the vast mass of frivolous litigation instituted year after year by litigants with an intent to use the courts of justice for their own mischievous ends. Curtailing such vexatious litigation is, thus, a crucial step towards a more effective justice system - a step that cannot be taken without the active involvement of the lower judiciary, especially in criminal proceedings.”
The above words of wisdom echoed by the Supreme Court in Krishna Lal Chawla and Others v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Another [(2021) 5 SCC 435] find meaning in the present case.
Revision petitioner filed a complaint before the Judicial First Class Magistrate's Court-V, Thiruvananthapuram, alleging various offences committed by 48 persons. The accused named in the complaint are high-ranking officials of the State like the Chief Secretary, the Home Secretary, the Law Secretary, the State Police Chief, the Additional Director General of Police, Commissioners of Police, Superintendents of Police and others. After considering the materials on record and the statement of the defacto complainant, the learned Magistrate found no sufficient ground for proceeding against the accused and dismissed the complaint under section 203 Cr.P.C. Aggrieved by the said dismissal, this criminal revision petition is preferred.
2. The revision petitioner filed a private complaint before the Magistrate, alleging offences committed by the accused based on three different incidents that happened within the limits of three different police stations.
3. Revision petitioner as complainant alleged that all the 48 accused had committed offences like forgery, conspiracy, cheating, violence, breach of trust and even disobeyed the directions of law. It was pleaded that police had fabricated a document containing revision petitioner’s forged signature, while the officer who investigated the case succumbed to the temptations of the first accused (the Chief Secretary of Kerala) and took bribe and impersonated the revision petitioner and forged his signature, while the officer who investigated the case at Kazhakoottam succumbed to the temptations of the Commissioner of Police, Thiruvananthapuram (Accused No.43) and took bribe and forged the signature. Various incidents of cheating were also alleged, apart from violation of directions of law as per which the accused allegedly committed the offence under section 166 Cr.P.C.
4. The revision petitioner further alleged that he had taken expert opinion from a trustworthy laboratory and based on the above allegations the revision petitioner prayed that, in order to save the judiciary and the Constitution of India, life imprisonment must be imposed upon the accused for the offences under sections 467, 471, 409, 419, 420, 219, 324, 166, 182, 199, 200, 203 and 294(b) read with section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. Various other reliefs were also sought for in the complaint drafted in a manner akin to a writ petition.
5. By the impugned order dated 20.10.2022, learned Magistrate dismissed the complaint after finding that the statement of the revision petitioner and the materials produced did not show any material grounds to proceed against the accused.
6. Sri.Asif Azad, the revision petitioner who appeared as party-in-person, contended that the complaint filed by him before three police stations were referred by the police after producing a notice containing his forged signatures. It was alleged that the expert opinion obtained by him was convincing enough to show that the signatures were forged and therefore the accused had conspired to commit the forgery. It was further submitted that the revision petitioner had sufficient materials to prove the guilt of all the accused and therefore the Magistrate erred in dismissing the complaint. He further pointed out that on 05.01.2022, this Court had in W.P.(C) No.17767 of 2021 directed the final report to be filed in a time bound manner, at any rate, within two months from that day. However, the police had created records to show that the final report in the said case was filed on 12.12.2021, which by itself is indicative of the falsity of the case of the accused. It was submitted that the impugned order ought to be set aside.
7. Sri.C.N.Prabhakaran, learned Public Prosecutor on the other hand, contended that the revision petitioner is abusing the process of law. Pointing out the details of the accused persons, it was submitted that the revision petitioner is indulging in harassing the Government Officials, and no offence, as alleged, is made out from the complaint. The learned Public Prosecutor further contended that there is neither any material nor anything in the statement of the revision petitioner to indicate any offence committed by accused Nos.1 to 42, who are the highest Government and Police Officials of the State. In any case, it was pointed out that sanction to prosecute the accused had not been obtained and therefore on that ground also the impugned order ought not be interfered with.
8. I have considered the rival contentions.
9. As mentioned in the initial part of this judgment, the revision petitioner has arrayed all the high-ranking bureaucrats and police officers of the State. However, a perusal of the complaint indicates that there is no clarity on the nature or manner in which the alleged offences were committed by the accused. The reason for arraying the various officials who are discharging public duties as accused cannot be comprehended. The role attributed to each of the accused has not been specified, and instead, vague, confusing and sweeping allegations of a general nature have been made against the accused.
10. Due to the nebulous pleadings and submissions of the revision petitioner, this Court had to decipher the nature of the grievance with difficulty. It was comprehended with much toil that the main grievance stems from three refer notices allegedly served on him relating to three complaints filed by the revision petitioner.
11. During the course of the hearing, revision petitioner handed over, in the abstract, certain pages of the judgments in W.P.(C) No.17767 of 2021, and in W.A. No.1038 of 2022. After obtaining copies of those judgments in full from the Registry of this Court, it was understood that the writ petition and the appeal were both initiated by the revision petitioner himself. The subject matter of those cases was a crime registered at the initiative of the revision petitioner before the Kazhakoottam Police Station as crime no. 448/2021. When W.P.(C) No.17767 of 2021 came up for consideration on 05.01.2022, a learned Single Judge of this Court, based on the submission of the Public Prosecutor, that the investigation is in its final stages, directed to file the final report within two months.
12. Revision petitioner filed an appeal against the said judgment as W.A. No.1038 of 2022 wherein, the Division Bench noticed that a review petition as R.P. No.213 of 2022 was filed by the revision petitioner himself, which was disposed of on 30.05.2022. The Division Bench also noticed that in the statement of facts submitted by the investigating officer in the review petition, there was a reference that the final report in the crime was filed as early as on 12-12-2021 before Judicial First Class Magistrate’s Court-II, Attingal. The Division Bench thereafter went on to observe, when the revision petitioner feigned ignorance of the final report, as follows: “it could be deduced that appellant/party-in-person has knowledge of the contentions(sic) of the final report and thus made submission highlighting his grievances against the contents of the final report.” The aforesaid circumstances are mentioned in this judgment as they have a bearing on the discussion.
13. Apart from Crime No.448 of 2021, revision petitioner had lodged another crime as Crime No.1988/2019 before the Thumba Police Station. In both crimes, final reports were filed referring the case as false, and refer notices were allegedly served on the revision petitioner. As mentioned earlier, with difficulty, it was comprehended that those two notices and a bail bond were the basis of the present complaint (produced as Ann. A1 in this revision) against respondents 2 to 49.
14. Those three notices were, according to the revision petitioner himself, subjected to forensic analysis in an independent forensic laboratory of his choice at the instance of the revision petitioner himself. The report of the forensic laboratory has been produced as Annexure A5 dated 21.05.2022. Contrary to revision petitioner’s assumption, the said report of the forensic lab stated that of the three questioned documents, the admitted writings and signatures of Sri. Asif Azad produced as S1 to S64 and the questioned signatures produced as Q2, Q3, and Q4 tallied with each other and they opined that the person who signed S1 to S64 had also signed Q2, Q3 and Q4 documents. This strikes at the very root of the revision petitioner's allegation that there was material to show that he had not signed the refer notice. As far as the first document is concerned, the scientific lab could not give any conclusive opinion. Thus the very basis of the revision petitioner's allegation in the complaint regarding the forgery of his signatures is disproved by his own material.
15. The learned Magistrate took the statement of the revision petitioner under section 200 of Cr.P.C and found that there are no circumstances disclosing the commission of an offence committed by accused 1 to 48 (respondents 2 to 49 herein) and dismissed the complaint under section 203 Cr.P.C. without issuing summons to the accused.
16. As mentioned earlier, the revision petitioner has arrayed numerous officers of the Government as accused without even making any basic allegation regarding the role attributable to each of them. In one of the paragraphs in the complaint, the revision petitioner has even mentioned that he has demanded in writing that the accused must pay him one crore rupees for each sign and one crore rupees per word, and with three signs and two words, a total of five crores of rupees need be paid by the accused to him. Allegations that are wild, unconnected and incomprehensible are thus raised in the complaint. Revision petitioner had, in the complaint filed, extracted various statutory provisions with vacuous allegations without any material to substantiate them. When complaints of an inscrutable nature are pursued, and when the Magistrate is satisfied that there are no sufficient grounds for proceeding with the complaint, the Magistrate has the power to dismiss the complaint under section 203 Cr.,P.C.
17. In the decision in D.N. Bhattacharjee and Others v. State of West Bengal and Another [(1972) 3 SCC 414] it was observed that:
“It has to be remembered that an order of dismissal of a complaint under section 203 of the Criminal Procedure Code has to be made on judicially sound grounds. It can only be made where the reasons given disclose that the proceedings cannot terminate successfully in a conviction. It is true that the Magistrate is not debarred, at this stage, from going into the merits of the evidence produced by the complainant. But, the object of such consideration of the merits of the case, at this stage, could only be to determine whether there are sufficient grounds for proceedings further or not. The mere existence of some grounds which would be material in deciding whether the accused should be convicted or acquitted does not generally indicate that the case must necessarily fail. On the other hand, such grounds may indicate the need for proceeding further in order to discover the truth after a full and proper investigation. If, however, a bare perusal of a complaint or the evidence led in support of it show that essential ingredients of the offences alleged are absent or that the dispute is only of a civil nature or that there are such patent absurdities in evidence produced that it would be a waste of time to proceed further, the complaint could be properly dismissed under section 203 of the Criminal Procedure Code.”
18. Similarly, in a recent decision in Krishna Lal Chawla and Others v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Another [(2021) 5 SCC 435, from which judgment, the proemial passage was taken, has observed that “the power to issue a summoning order is a matter of grave importance, and that the Magistrate must only allow criminal law to take its course after satisfying himself that there is a real case to be made…………..Thus, it is clear that, on receipt of a private complaint, the Magistrate must first, scrutinise it to examine if the allegations made in the private complaint, inter alia, smack of an instance of frivolous litigation; and second, examine and elicit the material that supports the case of the complainant.”
19. As pointed out by the learned Public Prosecutor, the complaint filed by the revision petitioner is undoubtedly an abuse of the process of the court. On an appreciation of the circumstances arising in the case, this Court is of the view that the learned Magistrate was justified in dismissing the complaint, nipping off, at the threshold itself, a frivolous litigation. In this context, it is also observed that even though the sanction to prosecute the accused has not been obtained by the revision petitioner, since the complaint was not dismissed for that reason, the said issue is not being dealt with at this juncture.
Considering the aforesaid circumstances, I find no reason to interfere with the order of the learned Magistrate, and this criminal revision petition is dismissed.
