The Police's powers under Section 156, Criminal Procedure Code, are not affected by an order to investigate under Section 202, and the Police can investigate and submit a charge-sheet even when a complaint has been made to the Magistrate.

Falshaw, J.

1. This order will dispose of five connected petitions all filed by the same petitioner Dr. Shankar Singh describing himself as the Managing Agent of Hoshiarpur Dasuya Bus Service Limited, Hoshiarpur. Three of the petitions are under Section 526, Criminal P. C., and are for the transfer to some other district of three cases which are pending in the Court of the Additional District Magistrate at Hoshiarpur in which the petitioner is an accused person, the cases being under Sections 406, 408, 409 and 471A, Indian Penal Code, Section 384, Penal Code, and Section 32 read with Section 36 of the Administration of Evacuee Property Act, The other two petitions are under Section 561A, Criminal Procedure Code, and are for the quashing of proceedings in the first and third of the above mentioned cases, the second case under Section 384, Penal Code, having apparently been overlooked by the petitioner in this connection, since the cases are all inter-connected and he wants all the proceedings against him to be quashed.

2. The petitioner and the other persons who are involved as accused in these cases are all apparently connected with the management of the Hoshiarpur-Dasuya Bus Service Limited, and there does not seem to be any doubt that the cases against them were started in a somewhat unusual and unorthodox manner. The original complaint was in the form of the letter addressed to the District Magistrate of Hoshiarpur by a gentleman named Suraj Parkash describing himself as the President of the District Transport Workers Union of Hoshiarpur. This letter is dated 12-11-1952 and it was apparently presented by Suraj Parkash in person to the learned District Magistrate, Who apparently treated the letter as a complaint, and recorded the statements of Suraj Parkash and one Jiwan Singh who described himself as an Assistant Cashier in the Bus Company and thereafter on the same day ordered the issue of search warrants under Section 06, Criminal P. C., as a result of which the Police raided the Companys office and seized all the books.

The allegations in the complaint were that the management of the company was keeping false account books and embezzling money which was the property of the company by making false entries about payments to non-existing employees and showing actual employees as receiving larger wages than they were really receiving, and there are other allegations of this kind, including one of non-payment of the proper passenger tax, and it was also alleged that the shares of an evacuee named Ghulam Mohammad had been fraudulently transferred in the name of a Director of the company. It seems that the Investigation of the Companys affairs was entrusted by the learned District Magistrate to the Police though no formal order for an enquiry by the Police under Section 202, Criminal P. C., appears to have been passed, and whether as a result of the investigation or not it seems that on 19-12-1952 Rura Ram Sharma, the Accountant of the company, appeared before the District Magistrate and made a comprehensive statement about the alleged misdeeds of the persons in charge of the companys affairs with the result that on that date the learned District Magistrate passed this order: "The complaint and the above statement of the complainant along with the documents Exhibits P-l to P-5 produced reveal commission of offence under Sections 406, 408, 409, 417 and 420, Indian Penal Code, and offences under the Indian Income Tax Act, Indian Companies Act and Administration of Evacuee Property Act. I therefore direct Station House Office City to register a case on the basis of this complaint and the statement and investigate and take further necessary action."

In other words, it seems that the learned District Magistrate decided that the earlier complaint of Suraj Parkash, which was in any case very vague and obviously made by a person who did not have first-hand knowledge of the affairs of the company, should be shelved or otherwise