The court upheld the prima facie evidence against one petitioner under the PCPNDT Act while dismissing the complaint against the other due to lack of incriminating evidence.

JUDGMENT

Mrs. Manjari Nehru Kaul, J.

The petitioners are seeking quashing of Complaint No.51 of 2021 dated 09.07.2021 titled as 'District Appropriate Authority, PC- PNDT, Fatehabad v. Dr. Seema Sethi etc.' under Section 28 read with Sections 3, 5, 6, 23 and 25 of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994 (hereinafter referred to as 'PCPNDT Act') and Sections 420, 120-B of the IPC along with all subsequent proceedings arising therefrom including order dated 05.08.2022 passed by SDJM, Tohana (Annexure P-2) whereby the petitioners and others have been summoned to face trial.

Submissions of learned counsel for the petitioners

2. Learned counsel appearing for the petitioners submits that the complaint in question (Annexure P-1) as well as the summoning order (Annexure P-2) deserve to be quashed primarily on the following grounds:-

2 (i). that upon a bare reading of the summoning order (Annexure P-2) it is discernible that it had been passed in a mechanical manner without any application of mind by the learned Trial Court. While referring to the ratio of law laid down by Hon'ble the Supreme Court in M/s Pepsi Food Ltd. v. Special Judicial Magistrate : 1997(4) RCR (Criminal) 761 and Sunil Bharti Mittal v. Central Bureau of Investigation : 2015(2) RCR (Criminal) 1, learned counsel has argued that summoning of an accused in a criminal case is a serious matter and thus, if at all the petitioners ought to have been summoned, the order passed should have been a detailed and well reasoned one, which however, was not the case. Furthermore, even if the allegations levelled in the complaint are considered at their face value, they do not prima facie constitute any offence under the PCPNDT Act and rather amount to an abuse of the legal process;

2 (ii). that while drawing the attention of this Court to the allegations levelled against both of the petitioners, Ld Counsel has asserted that as far as petitioner No.1-Dr. Seema Sethi is concerned, she has been accused of revealing the gender of the foetus to Rajwinder Kaur (decoy pregnant patient, whose original name is Krishna Devi), after conducting an ultrasound examination upon her, whereas on the other hand, petitioner No.2-Sunil Sethi has been implicated in the complaint only because he was the owner of Sethi Hospital and Maternity Home (hereinafter referred to as 'Hospital') where the said ultrasound examination was allegedly carried out. Learned counsel has vehemently argued that apart from being the owner of the Hospital, no role much less by way of a whisper had been attributed to petitioner No.2-Sunil Sethi in the complaint. In support, he has drawn the attention of this Court to the Complaint, annexed as Annexure P-1;

2 (iii). that while highlighting the apparent malafides of the complainant in filing the instant complaint, learned counsel submits that it was a matter of record that previously an FIR dated 26.07.2018 under sections 3, 5 and 6 of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, Sections 23 and 27 of the PCPNDT Act and Section 420 of the IPC, was registered with respect to the same occurrence; following a detailed investigation, a final report (Annexure P-15) was presented on 26.10.2018 wherein petitioner No.1 had been declared innocent while petitioner No.2 had not even been named in the FIR in question and challan had been presented only against Rekha Rani and Deep Singh. However, a bare perusal of the instant Complaint reveals that the complainant i.e. District Appropriate Authority (hereinafter referred to as 'DAA'), while filing the present complaint conspicuously refrained from disclosing the registration of the aforementioned FIR and the challan not having been presented against the petitioners;

2 (iv). that after the registration of the aforementioned FIR, licence of the ultrasound centre of the petitioners was suspended by the respondent for a year with effect from 26.07.2018, and all the machines were sealed (Anne