DEBENDRA NATH SEN Vs. RAJENDRA CHANDRA ROY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition for quashing the proceedings pending against the petitioners in the court of Sri S.B. Sarkar, Magistrate First Class, Alipore, 24-Parganas.

(2.) The case made in the petition of complaint upon which the said proceedings have been started is as follows : The petitioner is a Kabiraj and was in charge of Asansol Branch of the opposite party, Dacca Ayurvedic Pharmacy Limited. It was the duty of the petitioner to enter the medicines received by him in the cash book and the stock book and he was to remit the sale proceeds and render weekly, monthly and periodical accounts, to the Head Office. From the cash book it has been found that the accused misappropriated Rs. 527-7-6 in the first week of January 1954 and has also misappropriated over Rs. 1742/- by introducing spurious medicines namely "Makaradhwaj and Swarnasindur" and "Rasasindur" in the stock of the company. Upon those allegations the present proceedings have been started against the petitioner.

(3.) The ground, on which the said proceedings are sought to be quashed is that the criminal court at Alipore had no jurisdiction to try the alleged offence of the petitioner. The case against the petitioner was under Section 408, Penal Code, that is to say, criminal breach of trust by a clerk or a servant. The petitioner contends before us that in a case of criminal breach of trust or misappropriation the court competent to try the same would be the court situated at a place where the entrustment or the positive act of conversion took place. But in this case, it was alleged, the petition of complaint shows that the conversion and or the entrustment took place at Asansol and, therefore, the court at Asansol is the court competent to try this offence.