BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Monday stayed the investigation in connection with the First Information Report (FIR) registered by the city police against Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, former Member of Parliament Naleen Kumar Kateel, officials of Enforcement Directorate (ED), office bearers of BJP on the charges of extortion over electoral bonds.
Justice M Nagaprasanna passed the interim order after hearing the petition filed by Kateel questioning the legality of the FIR registered by Tilak Nagar police in the city on the charges of extortion on an order passed by a magistrate on a private complaint filed by Adarsh R Iyer, the Co-President of Janaadhikaara Sangharsha Parishath (JSP) over electoral bonds.
Justice Nagaprasanna noted that the Magistrate while referring the matter for investigation nowhere observed that it is the victim who has suffered at the hands of the petitioner the accused for parting away with property on a fear that is injected into him. Unless the complaint meets the ingredient of Section 383 as observed herein above, permitting investigation even prima facie till the statement of objections is filed by the respondents would become an abuse of the process of the law. In that light, “I deem it appropriate to interdict further investigation into the matter till the next date of hearing”, the judge said while adjourning the hearing to October 22.
The court further said that what is alleged is Section 384 of IPC which deals with punishment for extortion. The ingredients of extortion are found in Section 383 which mandates that any informant who approaches the concerned court or jurisdictional police should have been put into fear and due to that fear, he should have delivered property to the accused. It is only then extortion can be established prima facie against that accused qua the victim, the court said.
The court also stated that it is a settled principle of law that criminal law can be set into motion by any person. But there are provisions under the IPC that they can be set into motion only by the aggrieved. To illustrate offences of assault, offences thieving under section 379 or extortion under Section 383. It is only if the accused has put the victim under fear that the victim would mean the first informant, under fear to deliver a property. It is then that it would amount to extortion.
If the ingredients of the case at hand is noticed, the complainant becomes significant. The complainant is the co-president of JSP. It is not his case that he has been put into fear to deliver any property to his hands. It is not his case that he has been threatened with parting with any property. Therefore, the complainant in the case at hand, if he wants to project Section 384 of IPC should be an aggrieved informant under Section 383, which he is not, the court observed.
The court also said that the complainant should be a person who is put into fear to deliver any property or valuable security to the accused. The issue in the case at hand is not that the complainant has suffered any fear at the hands of the petitioner, Kateel, accused number 4, or the accused as the case may be. It is the case that they are JSP and they are entitled to register the crime for extortion in the light of finding of the Apex Court, the court said.
Referring to the documents appended to the petition, senior counsel K G Raghavan, appearing for Kateel, submitted that those documents prima facie demonstrate that no case of extortion is made out in the complaint or in the reference made by the magistrate seeking to investigate the matter. The complaint itself is so vague and does not make out any ingredient of extortion qua the complainant. Section 384 cannot be invoked by any person. It is an exception to the concept of any person setting the criminal law into motion, he argued.
Countering it, senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the complainant, vehemently refuted Raghavan’s submission to contend that this is a classic case of extortion where accused number 2, the ED have out fear in certain companies to take electoral bonds as a quid pro quo. The Apex court while dealing with the issue has left it open to the aggrieved to recourse to remedies available under the law governing both criminal procedures. Taking a queue from the order passed by the apex court, the complaint is filed before the magistrate and therefore the crime should be permitted to be investigated into, he argued.