INDRAKUMAR FAREDUN IRANI Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These 23 applications involve similar questions of law and fact and they have been heard together and this judgment disposes of all these cases.

(2.) The facts giving rise to those criminal applications are that a large number of cars registered with Delhi Regional Transport Office were stolen during the period from 1981 to 1983 and the owners of those cars lodged reports about the thef of their cars at the local Police Stations having jurisdiction at Delhi. In some of the first information reports the engine numbers and the chassis numbers of the cars were given and of some of the cars the engine numbers and the chassis numbers were found during investigation. The local Police Station could not succeed in recovering those cars and, therefore, in 1983 the matter was entrusted to the Anti-Auto Theft Squad at Delhi. The police officers working in that Squad in February 1983 got clue that some of those cars were brought to Bombay and they were disposed of at Bombay under fake registration numbers and the registration numbers were later on got changed. Those officers from Delhi and Chandigarh went through the registers maintained at the Regional Transport Office, Bombay, and from the engine numbers and chassis numbers they were having with them they could trace out the persons who were possessing those cars. They approached the persons who were possessing those cars and they found those cars at the residences of those persons. The cars were inspected and they found that they did bear the engine numbers and the chassis numbers of the stolen cars. From the engine numbers and the chassis numbers the police-officers were satisfied that those cars were the cars stolen from Delhi and they were brought to Bombay and under fake registration numbers they were sold and later on the registration numbers were got changed at the Regional Transport Office, Bombay. Those officers, after preparing the necessary panchanama giving all the details, seized those cars and handed over copies of the panchanama to the persons from whom the cars were seized. Thereafter those cars except the car involved in Criminal Revision Application No. 62 of 1983 were taken to Delhi and they were produced before the Magistrate having jurisdiction. The Magistrate having jurisdiction, after considering the claims of of the person who claimed that those cars belonged to them, handed over the custody of some of those cars to the claimants after obtaining necessary bonds from them, obviously under section 457 Cr.P.C. The present petitioners from whom the cars were seized filed petitions in this Court under section 482 Cri.P.C.

(3.) The contention of the petitioners is that they purchased those cars from Bombay parties, who are respondents Nos. 4 in some of these applications, through brokers and they paid the price thereof. According to them, they are the bona fide purchasers for value without the knowledge of the cars being stolen property. They got the cars registered in their names and also took out insurance policies. The petitioners aver that they apprehended that the respondents police officers might remove the cars to Delhi and Chandigarh and it would cause grave prejudice to the petitioners. The petitioners submitted that they were willing to co-operate with the Delhi and Chandigarh Police investigating those cases and that the cars should be given in their custody on the terms and conditions this Court deems fit and proper. They sought an injunction restraining the respondents-police officers from removing the cars from Bombay pending the decision of the petition. As stated earlier, all the cars except the car in Criminal Revision Application No. 62 of 1983 have been removed from Bombay to Delhi and Chandigarh.