QUMRUL HODA @ QUAMRUL HODAversusThe State of Bihar

          IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA
                 CRIMINAL MISCELLANEOUS No.22269 of 2023
      Arising Out of PS. Case No.-1552 Year-2022 Thana- PHULWARISHARIF District- Patna
     ======================================================
     Qumrul Hoda @ Quamrul Hoda Son Of Mohibbul Hassan Resident Of House
     No. 26, Village Aunsi, Babhangama, Ps- Bisfi, Distt- Madhubani At Present
     Residing At Flat No. A01, 2nd Floor, The Crescent Apartment, Ali Nagar, Ps-
     Gardanibagh, Distt- Patna
                                                              ... ... Petitioner/s
                                       Versus
1.    The State of Bihar
2.    Sultan Ahmad Khan Son Of Late Dr. Gulam Rasul Khan Resident Of
      Dumduma, Ps- Laheriasarai, Distt- Darbhanga
                                                  ... ... Opposite Party/s
     ======================================================
     Appearance :
     For the Petitioner/s           :        Mr. Rajesh Ranjan, Adv.
     For the Opposite Party No.2/   :        Shri Najib Ahmad, APP
     informant
     =====================================================
     CORAM: HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICE ANSUL
                  ORAL JUDGMENT
      Date : 22-06-2026
              This is an application under Section 482 of the Code of

     Criminal Procedure for quashing of First Information Report

     registered as Phulwari Sharif P.S. Case No. 1552/2022 under

     Sections 406, 420, 467 and 468 of the Indian Penal Code, pending

     before the learned Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate XIV,

     Patna.

                 2. The petitioner is eighty years old.

                 3. That the prosecution story, in brief, is this. O.P. No. 2

     owns a residential property at Harun Nagar, Sector-2, Patna. In the

     first week of January 2020, he approached the son of the

     petitioner, Md. Manjar Nadeem, for sale of this property for Rs.
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1,70,00,000. An agreement for sale was executed on

04.01.2020. A cheque bearing No. 311548 dated 04.01.2020

for Rs. 10,00,000 was paid on the same date. This is what

Annexure-2, the agreement for sale itself, records. Further

amounts were transferred by RTGS on 15.06.2020,

16.06.2020, 17.06.2020 and 05.10.2020. By 05.10.2020, a

total of Rs. 40,00,000 had been paid. Part of this amount

went into the account of O.P. No. 2 directly. Rs. 4,99,900

was transferred to the account of his daughter, Moina

Kahkashan, on his own instruction.

          4. On 05.11.2021, O.P. No. 2 himself asked for a

second agreement. Annexure-3 is this agreement. It records

receipt of Rs. 40,00,000. It obligated O.P. No. 2 to execute

the registered sale deed within eleven months on receipt of

the balance. He also undertook to provide all title

documents. O.P. No. 2 then applied to the Haroon Nagar

Co-operative House Construction Society Ltd. for a No

Objection Certificate. The application was his own. The

affidavit accompanying it bore his signature. The Society

issued the NOC on 03.08.2022. On 06.08.2022, a home loan

of Rs. 1,30,00,000 was sanctioned by ICICI Bank in the

name of the purchasers. The bank’s condition was that the
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loan amount would be credited to the account of O.P. No. 2

at the time of registration.

           5. That O.P. No. 2 still did not execute the sale

deed. A legal notice was sent on 02.09.2022. Even after the

notice, Rs. 2,00,000 was deposited in his account on his

demand. He did not respond. Title Suit No. 450/2022 was

filed before the learned Sub-Judge I, Patna on 19.09.2022.

Summons was issued against O.P. No. 2. Three months after

the civil suit was filed, on 15.12.2022, O.P. No. 2 lodged the

present FIR. He alleged that the agreement for sale was

forged, that the NOC was obtained without his consent, and

that the accused persons had conspired to grab his property.

           6. The Annexures tell a different story.

           7. Annexure-2 is the agreement for sale dated

04.01.2020. It bears the signature of O.P. No. 2 as vendor.

The cheque number mentioned in this agreement is 311548.

The FIR itself records receipt of this very cheque. O.P. No.

2 cannot claim the agreement is forged and in the same

breath acknowledge the cheque paid pursuant to it.

           8. That Annexure-3 is the second agreement

dated 05.11.2021. O.P. No. 2 has signed this document also.

It records in terms that Rs. 40,00,000 had already been
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received. The argument that the entire transaction is

fabricated cannot survive these two documents, both

bearing the signature of O.P. No. 2 himself.

          9. Annexure-1 is the certified copy of the FIR.

The written report of O.P. No. 2 alleges that a forged

affidavit was used to procure the NOC from the Co-

operative Society. The affidavit placed before the Society is

on record as part of Annexure-1. It bears the signature of

Sultan Ahmad Khan, who is none other than O.P. No. 2. The

NOC, a copy of which is also on record, states expressly

that it was issued on the application and affidavit of Sultan

Ahmad Khan dated 01.08.2022. That O.P. No. 2 filed a

sworn affidavit before a co-operative society seeking

transfer of his own property and then alleged in an FIR that

the very same NOC was obtained by forgery is a

proposition that cannot be accepted.

          10. The most telling document is Annexure-5.

This is the plaint of Title Suit No. 463/2022 filed by O.P.

No. 2 himself before the learned Sub-Judge I, Darbhanga,

before he lodged the present FIR. In paragraph 9 of that

plaint, O.P. No. 2 admits receipt of Rs. 30,00,000 in his

bank account and Rs. 10,00,000 in the account of his
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daughter from the son of the petitioner. In that same plaint

he states that he handed over possession of the house to Md.

Manjar Nadeem. In the FIR he says the entire transaction is

forged and fabricated. These two positions cannot coexist.

The informant has suppressed the Darbhanga suit entirely

while lodging the present FIR.

          11. That both parties are now before civil courts.

Title Suit No. 450/2022 is pending before the learned Sub-

Judge I, Patna. Title Suit No. 463/2022 is pending before the

learned Sub-Judge I, Darbhanga. The civil courts are seized

of the dispute from both sides. The dispute is, at its core, a

property transaction where the vendor will not execute the

sale deed after receiving Rs. 40,00,000 of the agreed

consideration. That is a civil dispute. Nothing more.

          12. That the Supreme Court in Indian Oil

Corporation Ltd. v. NEPC India Ltd. & Ors., (2006) 6

SCC 736, observed in paragraph 10 as follows:

             “While on this issue, it is necessary to
      take notice of a growing tendency in business
      circles to convert purely civil disputes into
      criminal cases. This is obviously on account of
      a prevalent impression that civil law remedies
      are time consuming and do not adequately
      protect the interests of lenders/creditors. Such a
      tendency is seen in several family disputes also,
      leading to irretrievable break down of
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         marriages/families. There is also an impression
         that if a person could somehow be entangled in
         a criminal prosecution, there is a likelihood of
         imminent settlement. Any effort to settle civil
         disputes and claims, which do not involve any
         criminal offence, by applying pressure through
         criminal prosecution should be deprecated and
         discouraged.”
  13.    That in the very same paragraph 10, the Supreme
Court quoted with approval the observations in G. Sagar Suri
v. State of U.P., (2000) 2 SCC 636:

                     “It is to be seen if a matter, which
         is essentially of civil nature, has been given a
         cloak of criminal offence. Criminal
         proceedings are not a short cut of other
         remedies available in law. Before issuing
         process a criminal court has to exercise a
         great deal of caution. For the accused it is a
         serious matter.”


   14.   That the present case is a faithful illustration of what

the Supreme Court deprecated in paragraph 10 of the Indian

Oil Corporation. A civil dispute over a property transaction,

already pending adjudication before two civil courts, has

been given the cloak of criminal proceedings. The FIR was

lodged three months after the civil suit was filed against O.P.

No. 2. The timing is not coincidental.
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      15.   That no specific overt act is attributed to the

petitioner personally in the FIR. He is eighty years old. He was

inducted as a co-purchaser under the second agreement dated

05.11.2021. The allegations against him are vague and omnibus.

Even accepting every word of the FIR at face value, no

independent criminal role is disclosed against him.

      16.   That Shri Najib Ahmad, learned counsel appearing

for the informant, raised two submissions. First, he submitted that

the dispute involves questions of fact which cannot be gone into

in a petition under Section 482 of the Code. The genuineness of

the agreements, the signatures of O.P. No. 2, the manner in which

the NOC was obtained — all these, he urged, are matters for trial.

This Court, he submitted, cannot conduct a mini-trial at the

threshold. Second, he submitted that the ingredients of Section

467 of the Indian Penal Code are squarely made out. The affidavit

placed before the Co-operative Society, he argued, was not

executed by O.P. No. 2. It was a forged document used to procure

the NOC. Obtaining a housing loan on the basis of a forged NOC

is a serious offence. The petitioner, being a co-purchaser and the

father of the principal accused, was a party to this conspiracy. The

FIR discloses a cognizable offence and deserves to be

investigated, he submitted.
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      17.   That Shri Rajesh Ranjan, learned counsel appearing

for the petitioner, submitted that the documents annexed to the

petition are sufficient to demonstrate, without any inquiry into

disputed facts, that the FIR is an abuse of the process. He

submitted that the very documents filed by O.P. No. 2 in the civil

courts give the lie to the case set up in the FIR. No disputed

question of fact need be examined. The contradictions are

apparent on the face of the record.

      18.   That the submission of Shri Najib Ahmad that

disputed questions of fact cannot be gone into deserves

consideration first. The proposition, as a general principle, is

unexceptionable. But the documents relied upon by Shri Rajesh

Ranjan are not disputed documents. They are documents filed by

O.P. No. 2 himself — in his own plaint before the Sub-Judge I,

Darbhanga, in his own written report to the police, and in his own

affidavit before the Co-operative Society. No disputed question of

fact arises when the informant’s own documents contradict his

own FIR. The principle against conducting a mini-trial has no

application here. The contradiction is self-generated.

      19.   That the second submission of Shri Najib Ahmad

regarding Section 467 fares no better. The NOC dated 03.08.2022

issued by the Haroon Nagar Co-operative House Construction
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             Society Ltd. states on its face that it was issued on the application

             and affidavit of Sultan Ahmad Khan dated 01.08.2022. This

             affidavit is on record as part of Annexure-1. It bears the signature

             of O.P. No. 2. O.P. No. 2 is Sultan Ahmad Khan. The submission

             that the affidavit was forged is thus a submission made by a

             person against his own signature on a document filed before a

             statutory body. It does not withstand scrutiny. As for the

             petitioner’s role in the alleged forgery, the FIR contains no

             specific allegation against him. Shri Najib Ahmad could point to

             none. Vague and general allegations of conspiracy, without

             attribution of any specific act, do not constitute sufficient basis

             for dragging an eighty-year-old man through a criminal trial.

                           20.   The petition is allowed. The First Information

             Report registered as Phulwari Sharif P.S. Case No. 1552/2022

             under Sections 406, 420, 467 and 468 of the Indian Penal Code

             and all proceedings arising therefrom are quashed insofar as the

             petitioner is concerned.




                                                   (Ansul, J)
Vikash/-

AFR/NAFR
CAV DATE             N/A
Uploading Date
Transmission Date