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A criminal complaint must contain the basic facts necessary for making out an offence under the Penal Code

In Prof RK Vijayasarathy vs. Sudha Seetharam, Karnataka High Court rejected the prayer of the appellants to quash the criminal proceedings instituted by the first respondent against them. The Appellants had stated that no offence is made out from the averments in the complaint as they stand and that the subject matter of the present dispute is of a civil nature and the criminal complaint constitutes an abuse of the process of the court.

On appeal, the Supreme Court found that the respondents have alleged in the complaint that the appellants have committed offences under Sections 405, 406, 415 and 420 read with Section 34 of the Penal Code. The Supreme Court observed that the High Court, in the exercise of its jurisdiction under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, is required to examine whether the averments in the complaint constitute the ingredients necessary for an offence alleged under the Penal Code. The complaint must be examined as a whole, without evaluating the merits of the allegations. Though the law does not require that the complaint reproduce the legal ingredients of the offence verbatim, the complaint must contain the basic facts necessary for making out an offence under the Penal Code. It would thus be necessary to examine the ingredients of the above offences and whether the allegations made in the complaint, read on their face, attract those offences under the Penal Code.

The Supreme Court allowing the appeal decided that the jurisdiction under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure has to be exercised with care. In the exercise of its jurisdiction, a High Court can examine whether a matter which is essentially of a civil nature has been given a cloak of a criminal offence. Where the ingredients required to constitute a criminal offence are not made out from a bare reading of the complaint, the continuation of the criminal proceeding will constitute an abuse of the process of the court.

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