The jurisdiction of the Court to make a complaint under Section 476 of the Criminal Procedure Code is contingent upon the offence appearing to have been committed in or in relation to a proceeding before the Court.

Curgenven, J.

1. This petition is preferred against an order of the District Judge of Guntur directing under Section 476-B of the Code of Criminal Procedure that a complaint be made under Sections 193 and 467 of the Indian Penal Code against the petitioner. The facts may be briefly stated as follows:--The, petitioner had executed a mortgage deed to the respondent for Rs. 8,000, and subsequently he filed a suit (O.S. No. 1136 of 1927) against third parties and applied for an interim injunction, in which application the respondent, under summons, produced the document in Court. The production was on 7th January, 1928, and an order granting the injunction, and thus terminating the proceeding in which the mortgage bond was produced, was passed two days later, on the 9th, but the bond was not taken back from the Courts custody by the mortgagee. Then some time later the respondent obtained a money decree against the petitioner in O.S. No. 164 of 1925, and proceeded to bring the mortgaged property to sale, subject to his own mortgage. The petitioner applied for a postponement of the sale, and in connection with the application asserted that the respondent had not given him credit for a sum of Rs. 6,000 which he had paid towards the discharge of the mortgage debt. This statement led to an examination of the document, which was still among the Court records, and it was found to bear an endorsement which the respondent denounced as a forgery which must have been committed after he produced the deed in Court on 7th January, 1928. He accordingly applied to the District Munsif before whom the document had been produced for an order complaining of the alleged act of forgery. The application was dismissed, but on appeal the learned District Judge has directed that a complaint should be filed under Sections 193 and 467, Indian Penal Code.

2. The question is whether the circumstances were such as to give the Court jurisdiction to complain under Sections 476 and 195, Criminal Procedure Code. It is necessary to observe in the first place, that the application was made in O.S. No. 1136 of 1927, and that that must be taken to be the "proceedings" for the purposes of these sections. As a matter of fact the document was not even produced in the execution proceedings in O.S. No. 164, so that, so far as that proceeding is concerned, no question of the applicability of Section 195(1)(c), Criminal Procedure Code, could arise. Nor, I think, as the District Munsif observes, could it be said, with reference to Section 195(1)(b), that the offence was committed "in or in relation to" that proceeding. The question accordingly is whether the complaint of the Court which disposed of the interlocutory application in O.S. No. 1136 was an act within its competence.

3. The power of the Court to make a complaint is derived from Section 476, Criminal Procedure Code, and the offence must be one referred to in Section 195, Sub-section (1), Clause (b) or Clause (c) "which appears to have been committed in or in relation to a proceeding in that Court." This latter qualification is to be found in Clause (b) of Section 195(1), but not in Clause (c). Its absence from Clause (c) cannot, however, affect the jurisdiction conferred by Section 476, so that I conclude that whether the offence be one mentioned in Clause (b) or Clause (c), it must appear to have been committed in or in relation to a proceeding before the Court that makes the complaint. And this appears to be reasonable upon general considerations. Clause (c) of Section 195, if read without reference to the terms of Section 476, would debar a Court from taking cognizance of any offence of forgery committed by a party to a proceeding in respect of a document produced or given in evidence in that proceeding, whether or not the act of forgery bore any relation to the proceeding or not, and consequently whether or not the Court before which the proceeding took place had any opportunity or occasion to deal with the