Uttarakhand High Court

Pawan Pal vs State Of Uttarakhand And Another on 7 August, 2025

     HIGH COURT OF UTTARAKHAND AT NAINITAL
         Criminal Misc. Application No. 1681 of 2016
                           07th August, 2025

Pawan Pal                                                       -Applicant

                                  Versus

State of Uttarakhand and Another                            -Respondents

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Presence:-
Mr. Navneet Kaushik, learned counsel for the applicant.
Mr. Deepak Bisht, learned Deputy Advocate General for the State.
None is present for respondent no. 2.
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Hon'ble Alok Mahra, J.

This criminal miscellaneous application has been filed by

the applicant to set-aside the impugned charge-sheet dated

18.07.015, summoning order dated 02.11.2015 and the entire

proceedings of Criminal Case No. 2035 of 2015, under

Sections 420, 467, 468 of IPC, pending in the court of learned

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Roorkee, District

Haridwar.

2. Brief facts of the case, in a nutshell, are that:-

Respondent no. 2, who was the Senior Bank Manager of

Syndicate Bank, Branch Civil Lines, Roorkee, lodged a

complaint against the applicant that a land was

purchased by Rishi Pal Singh, S/o from one Abhinav

Kumar by a registered sale deed on 02.07.2008. In the

said sale deed, the applicant was one of the witnesses. It

has further been alleged in the said complaint that on the

basis of the said sale deed, Rishi Pal took a loan from the

bank in the year 2008 itself by mortgaging the sale deed,

in which applicant is a guarantor. It has been alleged in

the complaint that Rishi Pal Singh paid the instalments

of the loan till the year 2015, but, when he stopped to

pay the instalments, then, bank inquired into the matter

and it was revealed that some other person alleged

himself to be the actual buyer and in possession of the

said land, which was mortgaged and further that the sale

deed executed by Sri Rishi Pal Singh did not contain the

photograph of Abhinav Kumar, but, some other person.

On the complaint, FIR was lodged on 30.04.2015. After

investigation, charge-sheet was filed under Sections 420,

467, 468 of IPC, in which only the applicant has been

made the accused.

3. Learned counsel for the applicant has submitted that the

applicant was only the attesting witness to the sale deed and

was neither the beneficiary of any alleged plot, nor he was the

person, who has purchased the property. He has further

submitted that neither purchaser of the property Rishi Pal

Singh has been made an accused nor the Investigating Officer

has named the person, who was alleged to be the actual buyer

and chargesheet against the applicant has been filed only on

the basis of the statement given by Abhinav Kumar; that he

has not sold the property to Rishi Pal and he has sold it to

some other person, but, neither the person alleged to be

vendee of the said sale deed have been identified, nor the date

of the alleged sale deed have been mentioned.

4. A perusal of the sale deed would indicate that the

applicant is the only attesting witness to the sale deed.

Besides this, no other sale deed has been produced, as has

been alleged in the inquiry conducted by the Investigating

Officer. Abhinav Kumar has not filed any suit for cancellation

of the sale deed executed in favour of Rishi Pal and the sale

deed is still valid.

5. Learned counsel for the applicant has drawn the

attention of this Court to Section 3 of the Transfers of

Property, 1882, which defines the word 'attested'. It states as

hereunder:-

"16.................................................................................................. "attested", in relation to an instrument, means and shall be deemed always to have meant attested by two or more witnesses each of whom has seen the executant sign or affix his mark to the instrument, or has seen some other person sign the instrument in the presence and by the direction of the executant, or has received from the executants a personal acknowledgement of his signature or mark, or of the signature of such other person, and each of whom has signed the instrument in the presence of the executants; but it shall not be necessary that more than one of such witnesses shall have been present at the same time, and no particular form of attestation shall be necessary;"

17. A careful reading of the aforesaid definition of the word "attested" would show that the essential conditions of a valid attestation under Section 3 of the Transfer of Property Act are: (i) two or more witnesses have seen the executants sign the

instrument of have received from him a personal acknowledgement of his signature; (ii) with a view to attest or to bear witness to this fact each of them has signed the instrument in the presence of the executants."

6. Learned counsel for the applicant has thus submitted

that the attesting witness proves no more than that the

signature of the executing parties that have been executed in

his presence. Learned counsel has further submitted that

before sanctioning of loan, the bank follows a procedure to

verify the genuineness of the document, which is mortgaged

before the bank for securing the loan. It is further submitted

that a bare reading of the FIR would reveal that instalments of

the said loan were paid by Rishi Pal till the year 2015 and only

on default after that just to cover up their own lacunae, the

Bank Manager have filed the present FIR.

7. Per contra, learned State Counsel has submitted that

applicant has been made accused after the Investigating

Officer found that the applicant has impersonated some other

person in the alleged sale deed.

8. Heard learned counsel for the parties and perused the

record.

9. Hon'ble Supreme Court, in the case of State of Haryana

and Ors. vs. Bhajan Lal and Ors., after considering all its

earlier judgments, has laid down principles, which are

required to be taken into consideration by the High Court

while exercising its jurisdiction under Section 482 of the

Cr.P.C. for quashing the proceedings. It will be relevant to refer

to the following observations of Hon'ble Supreme Court in

Bhajan Lal (supra):-

"102. In the backdrop of the interpretation of the various relevant provisions of the Code under Chapter XIV and of the principles of law enunciated by this Court in a series of decisions relating to the exercise of the extraordinary power under Article 226 or the inherent powers under Section 482 of the Code which we have extracted and reproduced above, we give the following categories of cases by way of illustration wherein such power could be exercised either to prevent abuse of the process of any court or otherwise to 1 1992 Supp (1) SCC 335 secure the ends of justice, though it may not be possible to lay down any precise, clearly defined and sufficiently channelised and inflexible guidelines or rigid formulae and to give an exhaustive list of myriad kinds of cases wherein such power should be exercised.

(1) Where the allegations made in the first information report or the complaint, even if they are taken at their face value and accepted in their entirety do not prima facie constitute any offence or make out a case against the accused.

(2) Where the allegations in the first information report and other materials, if any, accompanying the FIR do not disclose a cognizable offence, justifying an investigation by police officers under Section 156(1) of the Code except under an order of a Magistrate within the purview of Section 155(2) of the Code.

(3) Where the uncontroverted allegations made in the FIR or complaint and the evidence collected in support of the same do not disclose the commission of any offence and make out a case against the accused.

(4) Where, the allegations in the FIR do not constitute a cognizable offence but constitute only a non cognizable offence, no investigation is permitted by a police officer without an order of a Magistrate as contemplated under Section 155(2) of the Code.

(5) Where the allegations made in the FIR or complaint are so absurd and inherently improbable on the basis of which no prudent person can ever reach a just conclusion that there is sufficient ground for proceeding against the accused.

(6) Where there is an express legal bar engrafted in any of the provisions of the Code or the concerned Act (under which a criminal proceeding is instituted) to the institution and continuance of the proceedings and/or where there is a specific provision in the Code or the concerned Act, providing efficacious redress for the grievance of the aggrieved party.

(7) Where a criminal proceeding is manifestly attended with mala fide and/or where the proceeding is maliciously instituted with an

ulterior motive for wreaking vengeance on the accused and with a view to spite him due to private and personal grudge."

10. In light of the observations made by the Hon'ble Apex

Court and after going through the record and perusing the

FIR, it is revealed that the applicant was only a witness to the

sale deed, which was registered in the office of Sub-Registrar.

It is also relevant to point out here that the said sale deed

executed by Abhinav Kumar in favour of Rishi Pal and which

was mortgaged by Rishi Pal by securing loan from the

complainant-bank, have not been cancelled till date and is a

valid document. Since, the applicant was only an attesting

witness of the sale deed, therefore, offences under Sections

420, 467, 468 of IPC, under which he has been chargesheeted,

are not made out.

11. Section 420 IPC reads as hereunder:-

"420. Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property.--

Whoever cheats and thereby dishonestly induces the person deceived to deliver any property to any person, or to make, alter or destroy the whole or any part of a valuable security, or anything which is signed or sealed, and which is capable of being converted into a valuable security, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine."

12. In Lalit Chaturvedi v. State of Uttar Pradesh, this Court

quoted an earlier decision in Mohammed Ibrahim v. State of

Bihar, wherein, referring to Section 420 of the IPC, it was

observed that the offence under the said Section requires the

following ingredients to be satisfied:-

"The essential ingredients of the offence of "cheating" are as follows:

(i) deception of a person either by making a false or misleading representation or by dishonest concealment or by any other act or omission;

(ii) fraudulent or dishonest inducement of that person to either deliver any property or to consent to the retention thereof by any person or to intentionally induce that person so deceived to do or omit to do anything which he would not do or omit if he were not so deceived; and

(iii) such act or omission causing or is likely to cause damage or harm to that person in body, mind, reputation or property.

To constitute an offence under section 420, there should not only be cheating, but as a consequence of such cheating, the accused should have dishonestly induced the person deceived (i) to deliver any property to any person, or

(ii) to make, alter or destroy wholly or in part a valuable security (or anything signed or sealed and which is capable of being converted into a valuable security)."

13. The main ingredient for substituting an offence under

Section 420 is intention, as discussed above. As such, no

ingredients of Section 420, 467 and 468 are made out against

the applicant, as he being only an attesting witness to the said

sale deed. Applicant was neither the beneficiary of any alleged

plot, nor he was the person, who has purchased the property.

14. In such view of the matter, this Court of the opinion that

even if, any case is made out against the applicant, it is

essentially civil in nature. In the case at hand, this Court sees

no criminal element and consequently, the case here is

nothing, but, an abuse of the process.

15. Accordingly, the present criminal miscellaneous