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Synopsis

The Supreme Court on October 30 said that repeated petitions cannot be filed under Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code as it would allow ingenious accused to stall the criminal proceedings in an abuse of the process.

A bench of Justices C T Ravikumar and Sanjay Kumar dismissed a special leave petition filed by Bhisham Lal Verma, then Additional District Magistrate, Rampur against the Allahabad High Court's order rejecting his second 482 CrPC plea filed in 2022 against the charge sheet in a fund embezzlement case, five years after he filed a similar plea challenging sanction order for his prosecution.

The court, which appointed senior advocate S Nagamuthu as amicus curiae, agreed to a Madras High Court's judgment in the case of 'S Madan Kumar vs K Arjunan' (2006), cited by him that a person who invokes Section 482 CrPC should honestly come before the court raising all the pleas available to him at that point of time and he is not supposed to approach the court with instalment pleas. 

"Though it is clear that there can be no blanket rule that a second petition under Section 482 CrPC would not lie in any situation and it would depend upon the facts and circumstances of the individual case, it is not open to a person aggrieved to raise one plea after the other, by invoking the jurisdiction of the High Court under Section 482 CrPC, though all such pleas were very much available even at the first instance," the bench said.

The court also said, "Permitting the filing of successive petitions under Section 482 CrPC ignoring this principle would enable an ingenious accused to effectively stall the proceedings against him to suit his own interest and convenience, by filing one petition after another under Section 482 CrPC, irrespective of when the cause therefor arose. Such abuse of process cannot be permitted".

In the case on hand, the bench pointed out that the filing of the charge sheet and the cognizance thereof by the court concerned were well before the filing of the first petition under Section 482 CrPC, wherein challenge was made only to the sanction order. 

"That being so, the petitioner was not at liberty to again invoke the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court in relation to the charge sheet and the cognizance order at a later point of time," the bench said. 

The court said that the order passed by the Allahabad High Court was incontrovertible on all counts and did not warrant interference. 

A complaint was filed on June 23, 2012, by the Joint Director, State Urban Development Authority, Uttar Pradesh, before the Station House Officer, Police Station Kotwali, Rampur, alleging irregularities in the construction of toilets under the Integrated Low Cost Sanitation Scheme and embezzlement of public funds by the persons involved. 

The petitioner herein, being the Project Director/Additional District Magistrate, Rampur, at the relevant time, was also implicated and named as accused.

In 2018, the petitioner filed a 482 CrPC plea challenging the sanction granted in 2013. He withdrew the plea after the state government counsel submitted that the sanction could be questioned before the trial court.

In 2022, he filed another plea in the high court for quashing of the charge sheet submitted in 2015.

The Allahabad High Court held that it was not open to the petitioner to go on challenging the proceedings one by one and as he had not felt aggrieved by the charge sheet or the order of cognizance when he had filed the first petition, the subsequent petition would not be maintainable.

Case Title: Bhisham Lal Verma Vs State of Uttar Pradesh and Another