SALEEL KUMAR V.S. Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Apprehending arrest in Crime No.42/2023 of Town East police station, Thrissur, registered for offences under Ss. 406 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code, and under Sec. 3 r/w Sec. 21, Sec. 5 R/w Sec. 23 of the BUDS Act, 2019. accused has filed this petition.

(2.) The prosecution allegation is that the accused has collected an amount of Rs.1,00,000.00 from Ms Honey Thomas as a deposit in the guise of franchisee security in the company Safe a and Strong Business Consultant Pvt.Ltd, a company which was managed and run by the accused by promising a monthly return of Rs.2,000.00 as a franchisee stipend. He also promised as another option that after the period of five years, the security amount of Rs.1,00,000.00would be refunded along with an additional benefit of Rs.2.5 lakh as a franchisee stipend and thereby committed the above offence.

(3.) Learned counsel for the petitioner Sri. K.R. Vinod argues that there is no averment either in the FIR or in the FIS that the second accused, the petitioner, has taken any money from the defacto complainant. It is also his contention that he resigned from the directorship on 5/12/2021, though his original date of appointment was 26/6/2019, and he had produced Annexure A2 to prove the same. His further argument is that in the absence of any allegation against him that he was the director or that he is a director now, or that while functioning as a director, he had taken any amount from the defacto complainant, no charge would lie against him. He also argues that under law, a director's vicarious liability is only when any involvement is alleged against him. In the absence of any of the above, no offence could be alleged against him. Under such circumstances, when the offence itself is not made out, he prays that he may be granted anticipatory bail. To support his contention, he has cited the following decisions of the Supreme Court in National Small Industries Corpn. Ltd. v. Harmeet Singh Paintal and another [2010 (2) KHC 355], Sunil Bharti Mittal v. Central Bureau of Investigation (2015 KHC 4015), R.Kalyani v. Janak C Mehata and others (2009 KHC 4064) and Sushil Sethi and another v. State of Arunachal Pradesh and others (2020 KHC 6109), and also the decisions of this Court in Govind M.S. And others v. State of Kerala and others [2020 (1) KHC 74], Ashok Kumaran @ Sabu C v. State of Kerala [2023 (4) KHC 545].