PHILIPPE GELIE Vs. B N BANERJEE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Through this petition under Section 482, Criminal Procedure Code the petitioner seeks quashing of complaint case No. 746/6-2 followed by - First Information Report No. 214 of 1991 under Ss. 336/419/ 420/448/500/506/360/363/511/34, Indian Penal Code pending ht the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Kangra at Dharamshala. Before dealing with the specific contentions raised by the petitioner, it is necessary to make mention of the case.

(2.) Complainant (respondent-i) filed a complaint before Chief Judicial Magistrate, Kangra complaining, inter alia, that he is the principal of International Sahaja School, Talnoo, Dharamshala Cantt, imparting education from. Class-I to Class-V in this school with boarding facilities. Students belong to India, Canada, Australia, USA, Italy, Switzerland, Frane, Austria and Germany. From this complaint; paragraphs 4 and 6 are being quoted since they, pertain to the petitioner specifically:

(3.) Further, it has been stated that due to the action of the accused, the complainant started receiving frantic telephone calls and letters from the parents of the students who felt disturbed by the reports published in French News Papers that the children were not being treated properly as seen by the reporters personally. The children were not allowed to go out, they were sick and were not being given proper treatment. The parents became worried and anxious to learn about the welfare of their wards and some of them wanted to withdraw their children from this school on the basis of these false baseless and misleading news reports. The accused also threatened the parents and the complainant for publishing further misleading reports, in case the children were not sent back immediately and the school closed. All the students belong to well to do families and all the accused included to hold at ransom the complainant and the parents after obtaining personal information about the student and their families under false pretexts. The accused had mala fide intention in visiting the school peruses and publishing distorting facts in the French Press thereby offending the standards of formalistic ethics and acting without sense of responsibility simply to elevate their own requirements of image building. All the accused were not, therefore, vigilant and carp-full about the integrity of the source of news forgetting their responsibility towards the society. Thus, the accused have deliberately malign the well-established reputation of the school endangering the lived of the children and their families by exposing them the danger of kidnapping and, ransom and persuading them to run away from the school with the accused without the knowledge of the school authorities. The accused extended false information of being the relations of the students.