The central legal point established in the judgment is the essential elements of fraudulent or dishonest inducement in the offence of cheating under Section 415 and 420 of the Penal Code.

JUDGMENT :

1. The present petition has been filed by the petitioners under Section 561-A Cr.P.C. (now 482 Cr.P.C.) for quashing of criminal proceedings in complaint titled "Professor Indu Bhushan Sharma vs. Dr. Devinder Singh and others" pending before the Court of learned Special Mobile Magistrate (Passenger Tax Shops and Establishment Act) (hereinafter to be referred as the trial court) filed under sections 417, 420, 120-B.

2. It is stated that petitioner No. 1 is a society registered under the Societies Registration Act and is based in Bangalore. The Society was established by a renowned scientist Sir, C.V. Raman and its aim is to disseminate science to the mankind. The petitioner No. 2 is the editor, whose role is to find the suitable and competent reviewers to access the suitability of the paper received for publication as per the policy and guidelines stipulated by the Academy.

3. It is further stated that proforma respondent Nos. 2 and 3 submitted their manuscripts titled Synthesis and Characterization of Ruddlesden-Popper (RP) type phase LaSr2MnCrO7 on 5th February, 2010 and revised it on 22nd April, 2010 as per reviewer(s) recommendations and the paper was accepted by the petitioner's board for publication in the Journal on 4th May, 2010 and the same was published in journal of Chemical Sciences (Vol. 122 No. 6 Nov 2010 PP 807-811). After two years of its publication, a complaint of plagiarism was received by the petitioners from respondent No. 1 alleging that the complainant i.e. respondent No. 1 is one of the co-authors of manuscript and while sending the manuscript for publication, name of respondent No. 1 has been deliberately omitted. The said complaint was considered by the petitioner and the matter was placed before the Editorial Board of Journal of Chemical Sciences at its meeting held on 08.09.2012. The Editorial Board members were of the view that since there was no mechanism to find out the claim of the complainant/respondent No. 1, so it was unanimously decided to refer to the concerned University i.e. University of Jammu for investigation. Thereafter University of Jammu submitted a detailed investigation report on the request of the petitioners, wherein it was stated that research work published in Journal of Chemical Sciences, has been done by respondent No. 3 under the supervision of respondent No. 2. It was also stated that respondent No. 1 was earlier the supervisor of respondent No. 3 and was removed on complaint basis and respondent No. 2 was made the supervisor. The allegations of the plagiarism were categorically refuted by the University.

4. Respondent No. 1 also sent a legal notice to the petitioners and the same was duly received by the petitioners and was duly replied by the petitioners on the basis of the information received from respondent Nos. 2 and 3 and University of Jammu. The respondent No. 1 thereafter filed a complaint before the learned trial court. The petitioners have impugned the complaint on the following grounds:

a. That by reading the complaint as a whole and allegations made in the complaint, even if taken at their face value and accepted in their entirety, no prudent person can lead himself to the conclusion that offences under Sections 417, 420, 120-B of RPC are made out;

b. That the allegations made in the complaint are so absurd and inherently improbable on the basis of which no prudent person can lead himself to the conclusion that there are sufficient grounds to proceed on the present complaint;

c. That the ingredients of Section 420 RPC are not contained in the complaint.

5. Response stands filed by respondent No. 1 in which it is stated that the factual questions have been raised those cannot be adjudicated in the present petition and further that the petitioners have falsely stated that they relied upon the report of the Jammu University as Jammu University submitted their report on 21.01.2013 while the petitioners on 10.12.2012 refused to remove the paper from publicatio