Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 2: High Court has quashed FIR registered by Vigilance Organization Jammu (now ACB) against Rajesh Gupta, Chief Enforcement Officer, Madan Lal, Assistant Enforcement Officer, Kuldeep Kumar, Enforcement Officer of Municipal Corporation Jammu and beneficiary.
On 17th April 2017, the Vigilance Organization Jammu registered FIR No.12/2017 against petitioners as also against one Manju Gupta on the ground that during verification into the allegations it came to the fore that beneficiary in active league with accused officers/official of JMC and in utter violation of approved plan, raised the construction as ground floor, 1st floor and 2nd floor of 1736 sqft FAR 95.9 and height 38 ft. with setbacks 1.6 ft only.
It was also alleged that in order to cover up the violation and to provide sufficient time to beneficiary to raise the construction, a mere formality of issuing notice under Section 7(1), 12(1) of the Act of 1988 was undertaken and intentional inaction by accused public servants in league with beneficiary paved the way to beneficiary and allowed her to raise the construction in blatant disregard and violation of building permission, rules/law.
After hearing Senior Advocate Sunil Sethi with Advocates Navyug Sethi and Parimoksh Seth for the petitioners, Justice Javed Iqbal Wani observed, “facts emerging from the record indisputably tends to show that petitioners have acted within their bounds and have not indulged in any act that would attract provisions of Sections 5(1)(d) or Section 5(2)”.
“In so far as offence of criminal conspiracy is concerned, law is settled that there must have been an agreement between the persons, who are alleged to have conspired and that agreement should be either for doing an illegal act or for doing by illegal means. The only relevant factor is that all means adopted and illegal acts done must be and purported to be in furtherance of the object of conspiracy”, the court said.
“Leveling of an allegation of conspiracy without mentioning as to how, where and which of the conspirators hatched conspiracy and for what purpose or circumstances warranting inference of existence of conspiracy is not enough to constitute an offence of conspiracy”, High Court said, adding “an FIR should make out a prima facie case of conspiracy against accused persons as one cannot have the construction of fine superstructure without a foundation”.
“Neither the impugned FIR nor the record tends to show commission of offence of criminal conspiracy by petitioners as such the impugned FIR is liable to be set-aside”, the High Court said while quashing the FIR.
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