The main legal point established in the judgment is that the materials available on record did not contain the necessary ingredients for the offence under Section 420 IPC, and the petitioners were not found to have committed the alleged criminal conspiracy and cheating.

JUDGMENT

(Prayer: Criminal Original Petitions have been filed under Section 482 Cr.P.C. seeking to call for the records in C.C.Nos.533, 530 and 532 of 2020 and 535 of 2021 pending on the file of the learned Chief Judicial Magistrate, Puducherry and quash the same.)

Common Order

1. The issues involved in all these criminal original petitions are one and the same and hence they are heard together and disposed of by means of this common order.

2. The petitioners who are arrayed as A9, A7, A8 and A11, have filed the above criminal original petitions seeking to quash the proceedings in C.C.Nos.533, 530 and 532 of 2020 and 535 of 2021, respectively pending on the file of the learned Chief Judicial Magistrate, Puducherry, for the offence punishable under Section 420 I.P.C.

3. The brief facts leading to filing of these quash petitions, are as follows:

(i) The petitioners are representing various medical colleges in the Union Territory of Puducherry. Based on source information that, the officials of Centralised Admission Committee (CENTAC) of Government of Puducherry and Management of seven medical colleges, both self financing as well as deemed to be universities have deliberately denied admission to the students who were selected in the counseling conducted by the CENTAC to the respective medical colleges and admitted students who were not selected by CENTAC, in various post graduate (PG) medical courses, a FIR has been registered against 13 named accused and other unknown officials of Government of Puducherry and CENTAC, in RC MA1 2017 A 0020, dated 18.09.2017, for offence under Section 120-B r/w Section 420 I.P.C. and Sections 13(2) r/w 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Out of the 13 accused, A1 to A6 are officials of CENTAC, and A7 to A13 are representing various medical colleges in the Union Territory of Puducherry.

(ii) The above FIR has been registered on the ground that, A1 to A6 entered into a criminal conspiracy with A7 to A13, in the month of March-July 2017, relating to the admission of students in the PG Medical Courses in the Union Territory of Puducherry and in furtherance of the criminal conspiracy, the accused public servants abused their official position and cheated the bona fide students who were issued with provisional admission certificate during counseling by CENTAC and denied them the seat which they were otherwise allocated after due admission process and facilitated the private medical colleges to admit students who were not sponsored by CENTAC, thereby allowed the private medical colleges to collect exorbitant fees and deprived admission to genuine candidates.

(iii) It is further stated in the FIR that, the admission to the post graduate courses in the medical institutions were made through the common counseling based on the marks obtained by them in National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET). In the Union Territory of Puducherry, there are 318 post graduate / diploma seats in medicines and out of which 162 seats were earmarked as Government quota and the balance 156 seats were earmarked for management quota. The first phase of counseling was conducted by CENTAC on 11.05.2017, the second phase was held on 19.05.2017, a mop up counseling was held on 29.05.2017 and final counseling was held on 31.05.2017. Pursuant to the criminal conspiracy, the first phase of counseling was held without even notifying the fees payable by the students and the same was intimated only after completion of first phase of counseling. In furtherance of the conspiracy, after issuing provisional admission certificate, no efforts were made by A1 to A3 to verify the number of students admitted as against the students who were issued with the provisional admission certificate and they have also not taken into consideration of those students while calculating the vacancy position and they have wrongly stated in the website that all the students who were issued with the provisional admission certificate by CENTAC, were admi