NAVINCHANDRA N MAJITHIA Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner has approached this Court by way of this writ petition inter alia with the following prayers :

(2.) THIS writ petition is filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India under Section 482 of Code of Criminal Procedure. The petition arises out of a complaint filed by respondent No. 4 before the respondent No. 3 alleging that the petitioner who is the Managing Director of the India Farmers Pvt. Ltd. claiming to be in possession of certain lands in Aksa, Marve and Malavani village in Mumbai, had entered into an agreement with a company known as M/s. J. B. Holding Ltd. which is represented by the 4th respondent to transfer some equity shares of the petitioner company. Certain amount has been paid by the respondent pursuant to the agreement and certain shares have been transferred also in favour of M/s. J. B. Holdings Ltd. In the meantime, it is alleged, that at the time of entering into the agreement with the 4th respondent the petitioner company had suppressed certain material facts from 4th respondent company thereby petitioner committed the offence like cheating etc. and on these allegations, a complaint has been filed before the Special Superintendent of Police, Special Branch, Shilong on 11th June, 1997. It has come out from the affidavits filed by the Special Superintendent of Police, C. I. D. Shilong that when a permission was sought by Shilong Police to come to Bombay to investigate the offence from the Meghalaya Government, the same was refused on the ground of Financial constraints. In that context, J. B. Holding Ltd. has preferred a writ petition before the High Court at Guahati and an order was passed on 17-11-1997 by a single Judge of that Court directing the investigation to continue at the cost of J. B. Holding Company Ltd. Against this order of the learned single Judge of Guahati High Court, the State Government has filed appeal before the Division Bench and the Division Bench by an order dated 13th July, 1998 confirmed the order of the learned single Judge. Accordingly the investigation on the basis of the complaint dated 11-6-1997 was initiated by the Meghalaya Police and proceeded to Bombay and with help of Bombay Police, the petitioner and others were sought to be questioned. In or about that time the petitioner had to file an application before this Court in Cri. Application No. 3775 of 1998 for anticipatory bail and the same was disposed of by a learned single Judge of this Court on 30-1-1999 granting an interim anticipatory bail facilitating the petitioner to move appropriate Court in the State of Meghalaya for bail. In that application, jurisdiction of this Court was raised though incidentally, but not decided.

(3.) WHEN the matter came up for admission before us, the learned counsel for petitioner Mr. Sakhardande was called upon to answer the preliminary objection with regard to the jurisdiction of this Court to entertain this petition. We heard him in detail on that point.