N JOTHI Vs. RAJAMANI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner is seeking for quashing a private complaint preferred by respondent No. 1 on the file of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Nagercoil, under Section 500 of Indian Penal Code.

(2.) The facts alleged are shortly these :-The petitioner is a practicing Advocate in this High Court. While discharging his professional duty he was approached by Respondent No. 2 to give reply to the notice issued by his wife. He issued a reply on the written instructions from his client, who appended his signature on each page of the reply. That respondent No. 1, herein is the father in law of respondent No. 2 who filed the complaint against the petitioner and respondent No. 2, herein for an offence under Section 500 of Indian Penal Code, alleging that the averments in the reply notice are made with intention to harm his reputation and that both the accused joined together published the same to lower his reputation and thus they are punishable for the offence under Section 500 of Indian Penal Code. The averments made in the reply notice reads thus :

(3.) That respondent No. 2 herein contended that his counsel acted on his instructions and reproduced the averments he had made already in the earlier petition M. M. O. P. No. 84 of 1989 filed for divorce, which was much earlier to the reply notice. He has further stated that in order to bring pressure upon him he has invoked the process of the Criminal Court to deter his advocate from discharging his professional duties towards his client and that the petitioner herein never acted with any alice and he just discharged his professional duty and settled the reply on his instructions and he has signed at every page of the reply notice.