Mohd. Yusuf vs Krishan Kumar Gupta and Another

K.S.Gupta, J.—In this petition u/s 482 Cr.P.C., the petitioner-accused seeks quashment of FIR No. 266/98 u/s 448/380/34 IPC as also criminal proceedings emanating there from pending before a Metropolitan Magistrate.

Copy of said FIR No. 266/98 lodged by respondent No. 1 is placed at pages 37 and 38 on the file. It is, interalia, alleged therein that the complaint Along with his brother had been running cloth business in Shop Nos. 351-52, Bazar Delhi Gate, New Delhi; Hari Kishan Dass is that landlord/owner of the shop which the accused claims to have purchased but he has not made available any document of title to the complainant; when the complaint on 7th May 1998 around 9 AM went to the roof over the shop for keeping waste cardboards, he found that dandas, cardboards, bamboos stored inside the tin shed as also tin shed had been removed; on enquiry it was disclosed by Lalit Kumar Satija that said articles after removal from roof, were taken away in a rickshaw by the men of accused at the instance of accused on the night intervening 6th/7th May 1998. After completing investigation, chargesheet was filed against the accused.

Submission advanced by Sh. Vimal Shankra for respondent No. 1 and Ms. Sudha Varshney for petitioner was that as the parties have arrived at a settlement out of court, the criminal proceedings are not likely to result in conviction of the petitioner under Sections 380/448/34 IPC and the FIR in question as also criminal proceedings emanating there from, thus, deserve to be quashed u/s 482 Cr.P.C. Indisputably, offence u/s 380 IPC is non-compoundable. In the decisions in Ram Lal and Another Vs. State of Jammu and Kashmir, which was quoted with approval by a three Judge Bench in the decision in Surendra Nath Mohanty and Anr Vs. State of Orissa, it was held by the Supreme Court that an offence which law declares to be non-compoundable even with permission of court, cannot be compounded. In the decision in Madhu Limaye Vs. The State of Maharashtra, it was held that power u/s 482 should not be exercised as against the express bar of law engrafted in any other provision of the Code. Similar is the ratio of the decisions in Simirkhia v. Dolly Mukherjee, AIR 1999 SC 1605; Smt. Sooraj Devi Vs. Pyare Lal and Another, ; Dharampal and others Vs. Smt. Ramshri and others, and Satya Narayan Sharma Vs. State of Rajasthan, . Sub-section (9) of Section 320 Cr.P.C. says that no offence shall be compounded except as provided by that section. In case quashment of FIR and criminal proceedings in regard to offence u/s 380 IPC is permitted, it would run in the teeth of statutory prohibition as contained in said Sub-section (9) of Section 320 Cr.P.C. Obviously, case is not covered of the categories enumerated in the decision in State of Haryana and others Vs. Ch. Bhajan Lal and others, . Amicable settlement between the parties, thus, cannot be validly made the basis for granting the reliefs prayed for in the petition.

Accordingly, the petition is dismissed.