BENGALURU: Reiterating safeguards against misuse of criminal proceedings in civil disputes, the Karnataka High Court has quashed criminal proceedings against advocate S Rajendra and others in a land dispute case, while cautioning that criminal law cannot be used as a tool of harassment in civil matters.
The High Court said the police must exercise restraint while investigating civil disputes concerning title deeds, revenue entries, powers of attorney, or sale deeds unless the allegations unmistakably exude overwhelming criminality.
The High Court also said, "Equally, criminal courts, even at the stage of framing of charge, are duty-bound to scrutinise whether the material placed before them genuinely discloses strong suspicion and a reasonable prospect of conviction. The pendency of civil proceedings cannot be ignored while assessing whether criminal prosecution is being employed as a weapon of harassment".
Justice M Nagaprasanna made these observations while allowing the petition filed by advocate S Rajendra, who was representing a litigant along with others in a civil dispute concerning land situated at Nagarabhavi in the city, challenging the legality of the criminal case registered against them.
Referring to the case of the petitioners, the court noted that what emerges with crystalline clarity is the complete absence of even an iota of criminality, and a simmering land dispute between the parties has been artfully clothed in the robes of criminal prosecution.
Therefore, the criminal law cannot be permitted to degenerate into a weapon of oppression in aid of a civil contest. Therefore, on this solitary yet substantial ground, the impugned crime deserves to be obliterated at its very inception, the court added.
Stating that the police ought not to be permitted to investigate matters which are purely civil in character, the court noted that the pendency of civil proceedings cannot be ignored by the criminal courts while assessing whether criminal prosecution is being employed as a weapon of harassment.
"The criminal justice system, therefore, must operate through these twin filters, first, at the stage of investigation and filing of charge sheet, and next, at the stage of framing of charge by the concerned court. At both stages, the law vests ample power in the Courts to terminate proceedings that amount to abuse of process, subject always to the peculiar facts of each case", the court observed.
On what it described as a growing trend of advocates being implicated in criminal cases for merely representing parties, the court expressed concern over their being arrayed as accused.
Noting that it is encountering a plethora of cases wherein advocates, who merely represent parties before the courts of law in the discharge of their professional obligations, are themselves being dragged into criminal proceedings and arrayed as accused, the court said it considers it both necessary and appropriate to record its deep disquiet and increasingly disturbing trend that has surfaced in recent times.
Such tendency strikes at the very heart of the independence of the bar, by necessary extension of the purity of administration of justice itself, the court observed.
