The Punjab and Haryana High Court has quashed a case filed against the director of prominent political campaign management company, DesignBoxed, Naresh Arora, and pulled up Chandigarh Police for their malafide intent to harass him.
In its detailed judgement, Justice Vinod Bharadwaj termed the registration of FIR as an ‘abuse of process of law’.
The High Court also identified the petition as a frivolous and vexatious complaint that should have been nipped in the bud by the preliminary investigative agency and not waste judicial time.
A case was filed by Sulakhana Bali, a resident of Chandigarh, on June 11 this year, accusing Arora of duping her money.
The High Court in its judgement asserted that the police showed undue haste in registering the FIR on the same day on which the complaint had been received notwithstanding the guidelines prescribed under law and ignored that the allegations pertained to a money dispute which was more than seven years old.
Justice Bharadwaj passed a stern observation and asserted that “it was astonishing that Chandigarh Police showed unnecessary alacrity and oversaw the fact that the complainant had lost a previous case in this matter in the High Court as well as the Supreme Court and still expedited the case without looking into the matter properly”.
The judgement said that it is the constitutional duty of this Court to “quash criminal proceedings” that were instituted by misleading the court and abusing its processes of law, only to harass the hapless litigants.
It is pertinent to note that Bali has recently been booked by Punjab Police in cases related to extortion, blackmailing and criminal intimidation.
An FIR was registered against her in Mohali as she was accused of teaming up with notorious gangsters to extort money from the directors of the same company in Chandigarh.