Recently, the Supreme Court dealt with a two-decade-old cheating case, highlighting the growing concern over how criminal law is often invoked to settle personal scores and to give civil disputes a criminal colour.
The case arose from a land transaction dispute where the complainant alleged cheating and breach of trust. An FIR was registered more than twenty years ago, and the Jharkhand High Court dismissed a plea for quashing after nearly 15 years. The matter eventually reached the Supreme Court.
The complainant maintained that the accused had misappropriated property through fraudulent means. The accused, however, argued that the dispute was purely civil in nature and that continuation of the criminal proceedings amounted to abuse of process.
The Bench, led by Justice B V Nagarathna and Justice R Mahadevan, observed that not every breach of trust amounts to a criminal offence unless fraudulent misappropriation is clearly established. The Court stressed that frivolous prosecutions waste judicial time, deepen social divisions, and misuse the justice system.
Holding that the allegations did not amount to a criminal offence, the Court quashed the FIR while stressing that High Courts play a vital role in preventing misuse of criminal law.
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