S.B. PRASAD Vs. STATE OF UTTARAKHAND

JUDGEMENT

(1.) COUNTER affidavit, filed today in the Court on behalf of respondent No. 3 in WPCRL No. 700 of 2014, is accepted on record. All the above -titled writ petitions have been filed by the petitioners seeking relief of arrest stay, pursuant to the impugned first information report dated 12.06.2014 registered as case crime No. 102 of 2014 u/s. 420, 467, 468, 471, 120 -B and 506 IPC at P.S. Bahadrabad, District Haridwar.

(2.) THE genesis of lodgment of such report is the execution of an agreement to sale which was entered into after receiving a hefty sale consideration by one Devki @ Meenu Mahant. The property, which was the subject matter of the said agreement, is a vast agricultural land and this lady claimed ownership upon the said land on the basis of a registered will dated 5.9.1985 executed by her husband Mahant Narendra Dass. The question, whether the property was personally owned by Mahant Narendra Dass or it was the Wakf property of Gaddi Shanter Shah, was adjudicated by the Full Bench of Hon'ble Apex Court way back in the year 1966 in the case of 'Biram Prakash and others v. Narendra Dass and others' reported in : AIR [1966] (SC) 1011, whereby the same was held out to be the Wakf property, and for this reason, in the interest of Gaddi, Mahant Narendra Dass appointed a Committee of Trustees to advise him in the management of affairs of the Trust.

(3.) THE Will, in question, as alleged by the wife of Mahant Narendra Dass, was challenged in a civil suit. Though, the suit was dismissed in the Trial Court but the First Appellate Court i.e. the Additional District Judge, Haridwar adjudicated the appeal on 9th January, 2003, who, thereby, declared the questioned Will as illegal, void and ineffective. A further direction was issued in the said judgment for sending information of the same to the Sub -Registrar at Dehradun.