Now Reading: Calcutta High Court quashes case filed 8 years after accused died
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Calcutta High Court quashes case filed 8 years after accused died
The Calcutta High Court has quashed a criminal complaint against a doctor, noting the complaint alleged he threatened someone in 2018 even though he died in 2010. Justice Ajay Kumar Gupta held…
The Calcutta High Court has quashed a criminal complaint against a doctor, noting the complaint alleged he threatened someone in 2018 even though he died in 2010. Justice Ajay Kumar Gupta held the allegation was
The case involved a trust deed executed and registered in August 2010. The complainant, the niece of the original owner, alleged the deed was procured by fraud. She filed the criminal complaint in 2018 accusing the doctor of threatening her uncle on May 7, 2018. However, Dr Tapash Kumar Banerjee had died on September 22, 2010.
The Court also noted the magistrate failed to follow mandatory procedure under Section 202 CrPC before issuing summons for a person living outside its jurisdiction. A civil suit over the same property was already pending in Alipore Civil Court. The High Court called the criminal case a civil dispute disguised as a crime and quashed it as an abuse of process.
Indian Opinion Analysis
The High Court's decision underscores a recurring problem in Indian criminal justice: the filing of stale complaints that survive purely through procedural inertia. Magistrates routinely fail to verify basic facts, such as whether a named accused is alive, before issuing summons, a lapse the Calcutta High Court has now flagged. The case also highlights the misuse of criminal law to pressure parties in civil property disputes, a phenomenon the Supreme Court has repeatedly discouraged but which persists in lower courts. With the trust deed already under challenge in a civil suit in Alipore, the parallel criminal complaint added no legal value but imposed litigation costs on the petitioner. The key outcome to watch is whether the Alipore Civil Court now proceeds faster on the trust deed matter, since the criminal distraction has been removed.
Source: livelaw.in
This brief was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
