ANILCHANDRA PITAMBARDAS SAGAR Vs. RAJESH HARJIVANDAS JHAVERI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a Criminal Writ Petitioner under section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 for quashing of a criminal complaint, being Case No. 76/s of 1989, filed before the Court of the learned Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, 24th Court, Borivali, Bombay. The proceedings were instituted on a private complaint which was filed on or about 13-6-1989 and the learned Magistrate issued process against all the six accused, Nos. 2 to 6 of whom are the present petitioners Nos. 1 to 5 and original accused No. 1 is the present respondent No. 3 to this Criminal Writ Petition.

(2.) THE facts of this case present a most distressing and unsavoury state of affairs and it is, therefore, necessary to set out a few material details. Respondent No. 3 is a family friend of petitioner No. 1, who is the father of petitioner No. 5 Sunita, who, in turn, is the wife of Respondent No. 1, the original Complainant. petitioner No. 2 is the mother of the girl Sunita. Petitioner No. 3 is the grandmother and Petitioner No. 4 is the sister of the girl Sunita. Petitioner No. 5, as pointed out earlier, is the wife of the original complainant. In other words, the complaint is directed virtually against three generations of the family. The learned Magistrate has issued process under section 417 read with section 109 of the Indian Penal Code against the six accused. The present Criminal Writ petition contains a prayer that this Court should exercise its inherent powers for the purposes of quashing the criminal proceedings instituted before the trial Court.

(3.) BRIEFLY stated, the charges as set out in the complaint indicate that pursuant to the good offices of respondent No. 3, who was a family friend, in the month of September 1987, certain matrimonial negotiations took place as a result of which on 11-10-1987 the complainant and Sunita, the present petitioner No. 5, got engaged. It is the case of the complainant that at that time of the meetings that were held prior to the marriage, all the accused, which specifically included accused No. 6 Sunita, are alleged to have represented to the complainant and his father and mother that Sunita was hale and hearty, that she was educated, that she had passed her S. S. C. Examination and that she knew the art of cooking and doing the household work and above all, that she had no infirmity or disease. It is, therefore, the case of the complainant that he acted on these representations and that he proceeded on the footing that the representations in question were true and agreed to marry Sunita.