The High Court's inherent jurisdiction under Section 482 is limited to preventing abuse of process and does not allow premature determination of the case merits; allegations must prima facie establish an offence and cannot be deemed absurd based solely on circumstantial evidence.

JUDGMENT

Swarana Kanta Sharma, J.

1. The instant petition under Section 482 Code of Criminal Procedure Code has been filed by petitioner seeking quashing of Charge Sheet dated 22.09.2019 filed in FIR No. 280/2019 for the offences punishable under Sections 420, 120-B of Indian Penal Code, 1860 ("IPC") read with Section 66 Information Technology Act, 2000 ("IT Act").

2. Brief facts as disclosed in the petition are that on 22.09.2022, a secret informer came and informed one of the officer at Crime Branch/ISC that online recruitment of exam of group X and Y in armed forces were in process and few suspected persons will gather in room at Nehru Vihar, Near Mukherjee Nagar, Delhi to leak the question papers and solve the same by sending the solutions to the candidates for some money. As per the information received through informer, a raiding party was constituted and SI Surender Rana along with staff conducted the raid by going to the room on 3rd floor of the building. When they entered the room, they found many persons inside. The accused persons were solving the examination paper of one candidate Naveen Poonia, who was appearing in exam at a lab in Jaipur, Rajasthan, by using the software of screen sharing namely Ammy Admin Software. All the seven persons were apprehended including the accused/petitioner were identified. Allegedly Naresh was the organizer of the racket. He was in contact with many other labs and with the involvement of his contacts in these labs, he used to get the software of screen sharing used for cheating which was installed in computers in labs. Laptops were procured by co-accused Anuksh which were used in commission of crime and candidates were also arranged by him who were willing to appear in exams.

3. During investigation, petitioner disclosed that he was preparing for government service exams up to the level of combined graduate level and he has a good command on every competitive exam. It was admitted that for greed of money, he had agreed to solve the exam papers for Rs 15,000/- to co-accused Naresh. A mobile phone was recovered from the possession of accused in which conversation of all the accused persons were recorded. There are details of exchange of messages and centers between them for arranging the candidates to clear the examination. Mobile phones of all the accused persons along with laptops were taken into police possession vide separate seizure memos. A notebook containing incriminating details was also recovered from the possession of accused Naresh. To procure the Call Details Record (CDR), Router Modem and CAP details, notices under Section 91 Cr.P.C. were served upon the Nodal Officers of various mobile and internet network companies and replies to the same are still awaited. After receiving the FSL report, Investigation qua mobile Phones of accused persons will also be conducted. The question paper allotted to the candidate Naveen Pooniya was also sought from C-DAC and matched with the video recording of operation laptop done during the raid. During investigation, CPU used by the alleged candidate Naveen Pooniya was also seized by the officials of C-DAC from concerned lab i.e., Alpha Cyber Lab, Jaipur. The same was taken into police possession vide separate seizure memo from them. In this regard, case vide FIR No. bearing no. 280/19 was registered at Police Station Crime Branch, New Delhi for the offences punishable under Sections 420/120B IPC. Chargesheet has been filed and the same has been challenged before this Hon'ble Court.

4. Learned APP for the State strongly opposed the quashing petition a