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Synopsis

The Supreme Court has issued notice on a special leave petition (SLP) seeking anticipatory bail and granted “interim protection” from arrest to a man, Gurpreet Singh, trading in online foreign currency, against whom an FIR had been registered based on a complaint by an investor for alleged losses suffered in his trading account.

The division bench comprising Justice Bela M. Trivedi and Justice Dipankar Dutta passed the above order after considering the facts and submissions made by Senior Advocate Siddhartha Dave instructed by Advocate on-record (AOR) Shoumendu Mukherji and Advocate Megha Sharma.

The FIR in question had been registered after a long gap of 5 years from the date of the alleged offence under Section 420 of IPC. The FIR was received by the investing authorities on October 10, 2016 yet the FIR had been registered only on June 20, 2021. For the next two years even till date, no notice under Section 41A was issued to the petitioner to appear before the investigating authorities.

The said FIR was lying dormant all this while, and purportedly revived at the behest of another investor to incriminate the Petitioner.

The senior counsel appearing for the petitioner contended, “No S. 41A Notice had been served on the Petitioner after registering of the FIR in violation of the directions passed in Arnesh Kumar and Satinder Antil judgments”.

The controversy pertains to the opening of a trading account by the Complainant with a Hong Kong based company in June 2016 where he invested Rs. 3.5 Lakhs. Profits were made of Rs. 4.5 Lakhs. However owing to market fluctuations pertaining to devaluation of the British Pound at the time of Brexit i.e. July 2017, the value of the Complainant’s trading accounts became nil. 

The Complainant thereafter even had filed two police complaints against the Petitioner, on which the Petitioner duly appeared on six occasions. Later on the Complainant even withdrew one complaint.

Case Title: Gurpreet Singh v. State of Punjab