The Supreme Court has quashed the criminal prosecution of two individuals accused of obstructing a public servant in discharge of official duties, underscoring the "pivotal importance" of judicial intervention under Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to prevent abuse of process.
A bench comprising Justices P.S. Narasimha and Joymalya Bagchi held that “judicial intervention under section 482 CrPC to weed out vexatious proceedings is of pivotal importance in order to protect individuals from untelling harassment and misery and to ensure unmerited prosecutions do not crowd overflowing dockets of criminal courts and yield space for deserving cases.”
The appeal before the Court arose from a July 2015 decision of the Allahabad High Court refusing to quash criminal proceedings initiated against the appellants. The charges stemmed from an incident in June 2014 during an inspection conducted at a brick kiln in Varanasi, following allegations of bonded child labour. One of the appellants was a project coordinator with an organisation working to combat human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children in Uttar Pradesh.
The appellants claimed that they had rescued labourers and children from the site and brought them to the police station, but the kiln owner allegedly intervened and took them away. Subsequently, a police complaint was filed alleging that the appellants had “forcibly put the labourers and the children in dumpers and took them away.”
A chargesheet was filed, and cognisance was taken by the magistrate. The appellants then approached the High Court seeking the quashing of the proceedings. However, the High Court declined, stating they had a right to approach the trial court for discharge.
The Supreme Court criticised the High Court for not considering the facts or contentions of the appellants. The bench noted, “Faced with the agony of a lame prosecution, it is of little solace to a litigant to be told that inherent powers are shut out as he was entitled to approach the trial court and pray for discharge.”
The Court further emphasised the High Court's duty to determine “whether the uncontroverted allegations in the FIR/chargesheet constitute an offence, or continuation of the proceeding suffers from a legal bar or is wholly vexatious and an abuse of process of law.”
Upon examining the chargesheet, the bench held that it did not disclose any material indicating use of force or holding out threatening gestures giving rise to an apprehension of use of force towards public servant.
The Court referred to a report sent by the Additional Labour Commissioner, Uttar Pradesh, to the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, which accused the appellants of offering bribes to the labourers. The bench firmly stated: “Such insinuations are wholly unfounded and not borne out from the statements recorded during investigation.”
“This hostile stance of the department fortifies our conclusion that registration of the criminal case was a product of malice and personal vendetta against the appellants,” the Court held while allowing the appeal and quashing the prosecution.
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