YUSUF Vs. KRISHAN KUMAR GUPTA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN this petition under section 482 Criminal Procedure Code, the petitioner-accused seeks quashment of FIR No.266/98 under sections 448/380/34 IPC as also criminal proceedings emanating therefrom 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 complainant alongwith his brother had been running cloth business in Shop Nos.351-52, Bazar Delhi Gate, New Delhi; Hari Kishan Dass is the 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 complainant on 7/05/1998 around 9 AM went to the roof over the shop for keeping waste cardboards, he found that dandas, cardboards, bamboos stored inside the tinshed as also tinshed had been removed; on enquiry it was disclosed by Lalit Kumar Satija that said articles after removal from roof, were taken away in a rikshaw by the men of accused at the instance of accused on the night intervening 6th / 7/05/1998. 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 therefrom, thus, deserve to be quashed under section 482 Criminal Procedure Code INdisputably, of fence under section 380 IPC is non-compoundable. IN the decisions in Ram Lal and another vs .State of J and K, 1999 (2) SCC 213 which was quoted with approval by a three Judge Bench in the decision in S .N. Mohanty and another vs. State of Orissa, JT 1999(3) SC 408 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. State of Maharashtra, AIR 1978 SC 47 it was held that power under section 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 vs.Dolly Mukherjee, AIR 1999 SC 1605 : Sooraj Devi vs. Pyarelal, AIR 1981 SC 736; Dharampal vs. Ramshri, AIR 1993 SC 1361 and Satya Narayan Sharma vs.State of Rajasthan, JT 2001 (8) SC 157. Sub-section (9) of section 320 Criminal Procedure Code 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 under section 380 IPC is permitted, it would run .in the teeth of statutory prohibition as contained in said sub section (9) of Section 1320 Criminal Procedure Code Obviously, case is not covered by any of the categories enumerated in the decision in State of Haryana and others vs.Ch. Bhajan Lal and Ors , AIR 1992 SC 604 . Amicable settlement between the parties, thus, cannot be validly made the basis for granting the reliefs Sprayed for in the petition. Accordingly, the petition is dismissed.