FATHER THOMAS SHINGARE Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Leave granted.

(2.) A female child, by name Shalmali, was admitted in a school run by a religious minority at Aurangabad. Her father, an advocate by profession, filed a criminal complaint before the local Judicial Magistrate against the Principal and six office bearers of the school alleging that they have committed the offence under Section 7 of the Maharashtra Educational Institutions (Prohibition of Capitation Fee) Act, 1987, (for short 'the Act'). The Magistrate took cognizance of the offence and ordered process to be issued against all the seven accused who are arraigned in the complaint. Those accused challenged the said order first before the Magistrate himself and later before the Sessions Court and still later before the High Court. At all those levels they failed to get the order quashed. The impugned judgment passed by a single Judge of the High Court of Bombay has upheld the order passed by the Magistrate.

(3.) When the special leave petition, in challenge of the said judgment of the High Court, was pending in this Court the Principal of the school along with three other office bearers filed the writ petition in this Court under Article 32 of the Constitution for a declaration that the provisions of the Act, in so far as they apply to unaided educational institutions run by a religious minority, are ultra vires to Article 30 of the Constitution. Alternatively, it is prayed that this Court may declare that the provision of the Act would not apply to "unaided minority institutions".