IMPORTANT POINT
The judgment emphasizes the binding nature of decisions of the High Court and the duty of subordinate courts to follow settled legal principles.

JUDGMENT :

1. By invoking extraordinary jurisdiction of this Court Under Article 226, 227 of the Constitution of India read with Section 482 of Cr.P.C. the applicant – original accused No.8, has called in question the legality and propriety of the orders passed by the Courts below whereby the discharge application filed on the technical ground of law has been dismissed by the trial Court and the same is upheld by the revision Court.

2. The facts germane to dispose of his application may briefly stated as follows:-

The applicant Mrugesh Vinodchandra Shah is a practicing lawyer, who has also been appointed as Notary Public under the Notaries Act, 1952. The applicant is accused no.8 in a Criminal Case No.730 of 2013, pending before the Judicial Magistrate Court at Bavla. Pursuant to the FIR filed by the second respondent – original complainant Pravinaba Vaghela, the Investigating Agency has filed chargesheet against eight persons including present applicant herein for the offence punishable under Sections 406, 466, 468, 471, 120(B) of the Indian Penal Code.

The accused no.1 Pruthviraj Vaghela is the real brother of the complainant herein. The agricultural lands in different parcel of revenue survey numbers at Village Dumali, owned by the father of the accused and complainant. The complainant was having seven brothers and two sisters. In the year 1988, the father Mohabbatsinh decided to partition the said lands and accordingly, by written instrument dated 27.12.1988, land properties were partitioned among the ten persons. The complainant got 1/10th shares from the different parcel of lands, as per the family agreement. The parties have acted upon the agreement and accordingly, the entries in the revenue record were mutated in the name of respective beneficiaries of the alleged partition. Since the execution of the partition deed, the complainant become absolute owner of agricultural lands as per the measurement mentioned in the family agreement. The co-accused Pruthviraj who happened to be a real brother, had asked the complainant to sell her share to him but she did not agree to sell her share.

The dispute arose when complainant came to know that the accused had created a forged and bogus power of attorney and two other instruments viz. unregistered agreement to sell and the agreement to handover the possession, by which, her share was sold by way of registered sale deed. The alleged power of attorney and two other documents as referred were presented before the present applicant – Notary Advocate and in her absence, the said documents were notarized, verified, affirmed and authenticated by him and on the basis of said documents, the lands in question were sold to the coaccused. The said documents were notarized by 04.07.2010 and on that day, she had gone to Bhopal as her husband was serving in Army. In such circumstances, on 28.03.2011, the second respondent lodged an FIR against her brothers and others inter alia alleging that the accused have had hatched the conspiracy to grab the land in question for which, without any authority, they dishonestly and fraudulently created fabricated and forged documents in the nature of power of attorney, agreement to sell and agreement showing the possession so as to enable them to execute the sale deed and presented it before the applicant Notary Advocate for notarization and accordingly, the documents were notarized in the absence of complainant by the applicant herein.

After registration of the FIR, the investigation was undertaken by the police and after recording the statement of the witnesses and upon collection of the documentary evidence, the police found the sufficient material against the eight accused for the commission of the offence, cheating, forgery, forgery of valuable security and forgery for the purpose of cheating and accordingly, chargesheet came to be filed for the aforesaid offences before the Trial Court which has been culminated into criminal case being No.7301 of 2013.

So fa