The main legal point established is that quashing of a criminal complaint or FIR should be sparingly exercised and is permissible only in rare cases where no prima facie case is made out.

JUDGMENT :

Heard Mrs. Susmita Lal, learned counsel for the petitioner and Mr. Kamakhya Srivastava, learned APP for the State.

2. The present quashing application has been filed for quashing of the First Information Report (For short ‘FIR), which has given rise of Bhagalpur (Mahila) P.S.Case No.06 of 2020, under Sections 323, 341, 420, 376, 506 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 67(A) of the Information Technology Act.

3. The informant’s case, as unfolded by the First Information Report, based on an E.Mail by the informant to the Bihar Police Academy, Rajgir on 03.12.2019. According to statement/fardbeyan of the informant is that the informant is cousin sister of the accused and he sexually exploited her from the year 2009 to 2012 and again in the year 2018 he started to harass the informant by making calls in her office and messaging her and threatening her and then she complained about it in Bihar Police Academy through email where the accused petitioner was getting his training.

4. Treating the said statement/fardbeyan as First Information Report, Bhagalpur (Mahila) P.S.Case No.06 of 2020, under Sections 323,341,420,376,506 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 67(A) of the Information Technology Act, was registered against the accused/petitioner.

5. The petitioner seeks quashing of the First Information Report on the ground that whole case against him is a result of personal vendetta and conspiracy hatched by the informant herself to ruin the life and career of the petitioner. The present FIR was lodged in the year 2019 i.e. after 10 years of alleged occurrence.

6. It is necessary to mention that in the case of Kailash Rai Vs. The State of Bihar & Ors held by the Patna High Court reported in 2016 SCC OnLine Patna 8303, relevant paragraphs 7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14 and 15 read as follows:

7. Before entering into the merit of the petitioner's case, it is necessary to point out that the law, with regard to the quashing of criminal complaint or First Information Report, is no longer res integra. A catena of judicial decisions has settled the position of law on this aspect of the matter. I may refer to the case of R.P. Kapoor v. State of Punjab, AIR 1960 SC 866, wherein the question, which arose for consideration, was whether a First Information Report can be quashed under Section 561A of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898. The Court held, on the facts before it, that no case for quashing of the proceeding was made out; Gajendragadkar, J. speaking for the Court, however, observed that though, ordinarily, criminal proceedings, instituted against an accused, must be tried under the provisions of the Code, there are some categories of cases, where the inherent jurisdiction of the Court can and should be exercised for quashing the proceedings. One such category, according to the Court, consists of cases, where the allegations in complaint or the First Information Report, even if they are taken at their face value and accepted in their entirety, do not constitute the offence alleged; in such cases, no question of appreciating evidence arises and it is a matter merely of looking at the complaint or the First Information Report in order to decide whether the offence alleged is disclosed or not. In such cases, observed the Court, it would be legitimate for the High Court to hold that it would be manifestly unjust to allow the process of the criminal Court to be issued against the accused.

8. From the case of R.P. Kapoor (supra), it becomes abundantly clear that when a mere look into the contents of a complaint or First Information Report shows that the contents thereof, even if taken at their face value and accepted to be true in their entirety, do not disclose commission of offence, the complaint or the First Information Report, as the case may be, shall be quashed.

9. As a corollary to what has been discussed above, it is also clear that if the contents of a complaint or an First Information Report constitute offence, such a complaint or First I