Revision Petition to Quash FIR Alleging Forgery Was to Be Dismissed As No Evidence of Malicious Intent Was Found | HC

Case Details: Ramesh Sharan Rai v. State of West Bengal - [2023] 154 taxmann.com 295 (HC-Calcutta)

Judiciary and Counsel Details

• • Bibek Chaudhuri, J.
  • Milon Mukherjee, Sr. Adv., Rana Mukerjee, Ayan Bhattacharjee, Arik Banerjee, Meghajit Mukherjee, Aditya Ratan Tiwary & Ms Priyanka Sarma, Advs. for the Petitioner.
  • Ratnako Banerjee, Sr. Adv., Sabyasachi Banerjee, Jishnu Chowdhury, Aritra Basu, Anirban Dutta, Abhishek Jain & Binoy Kr. Jain, Advs. for the Respondent.

Facts of the Case

In the instant case, ‘P’ was admitted into the CIRP and the petitioner-‘S’ was appointed as a successful resolution applicant (SRA). A limited liability partnership ‘GL’ resulted from a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) among ‘P’, ‘S’ and ‘G’ where ‘G’ held 100 shares of ‘P’.

‘GL’ issued a notice to convene an extraordinary meeting of the company, which was held on 20-2-2023 and two persons were passed to be appointed as directors of the company.

When the opposite party (i.e. nominee director of ‘G’) was trying to upload the details of the outcome of the meeting on the MCA portal, he could not upload the same as the system showed an error message.

Upon inquiry before the RoC, the OP came to know that a resignation letter of OP from the company had been uploaded on 18-2-2023. OP filed an FIR against the petitioners alleging that his signature on the resignation letter was forged as he never signed any such document and a fraudulent letter had been uploaded by the accused-petitioners.

The petitioners filed an instant petition to quash the said FIR on the ground that in the resignation letter de facto complainant had put his signature and it was not forged and he had no locus standi to file a complaint against the petitioners.

High Court Held

The High Court held that since the investigating authority had scientific technicalities to examine signatures and the instant Court had no reason to believe that the proceeding was maliciously instituted, the instant revision petition was to be dismissed.

List of Cases Referred to

• • State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal 1992 Supp.(1) SCC 335 (para 13)
  • Dr. Monica Kumar v. State of Uttar Pradesh [2008] 8 SCC 781 (para 14)
  • Sanapareddy Maheedhar v. State of Andhra Pradesh AIR 2008 SC 787 (para 19)
  • Som Mittal v. Government of Karnataka AIR 2008 SC 1126 (para 20).