The High Court has the power to quash an FIR and investigation under Section 482, Cr. P. C., but this power should be exercised sparingly and only in the rarest of rare cases.

( 1 ) ALL these cases have been taken up together as certain common questions of law regarding interpretation of the provisions of the Arms Act, 1959, had cropped up in all these matters. While taking up the matters, the common points will be dealt in common while the individual cases of the applicants, beyond the common points, shall be taken up separately. The cases could be grouped in three broad groups. In almost all the applications the FIRs in the respective case have been sought to be quashed. In some of them protection against arrest during investigation has been prayed for while in one case there is simply a prayer for transfer of the investigation of C. B. I. (in Crl. Misc. Application No. 4694 of 1997 ). Some of the applicants are dealers in arms, who are sought to be prosecuted for purchase of weapons allegedly smuggled into India. Some others are both purchasers and sellers while a third group consists of mere bona fide purchasers as per their claims.

( 2 ) THE basic facts behind these cases, bereft of the details, are as follows :on some report about illegal smuggling of arms into India, the District Magistrates of different districts issued directions to the licensed arms dealers to declare their transactions of purchase and sale during a certain period. Upon such disclosures the matters were enquired into and alleged fake deals under fake licences were discovered wherein fire arms of foreign origin were purchased and/or sold. A consolidated FIR was lodged covering all such actions. The FIR was challenged before the High Court and it was held to be illegal and the authorities were directed to institute separate and definite cases against the different alleged wrong-doers. This gave rise to the present FIRs which are under challenge in the aforesaid applications.

( 3 ) CRL. Misc. Application No. 4434 of 1997 relates to case Crime No. 631 of 1997 under S. 8 (2) (25) of the Arms Act, P. S. Shahganj, Allahabad. This report was lodged on 8-7-1997 by the City Magistrate, In-charge of the Arms Section, Allahabad. M/s. India Arms Stores, Leader Road, P. S. Shahganj, stood names as the accused. The applicant, Mohd. Nazim, is the licencee for this M/s. India Arms Stores. This case relates to two pistols on which the names of the manufacturing company were not engraved. The licencee was asked to indicate in detail the description of these two pistols but the licencee simply indicated the pistols to be of foreign make. It was stated in the FIR that there was violation of S. 8 (2) punishable under S. 25 of the Arms Act. The FIR itself speaks of a plea by the dealer that he was not in a position to give the other details as his papers were seized by the CBI. It is the case of the prosecution that the CBI had seized the papers for a particular period only and it was open for the dealer to give the details from the subsequent papers. In this case it is the plea of the applicant Mohd. Nazim that the available details were given to the District Magistrate in terms of his notice. His firm had purchased one pistol from M/s. H. N. Sahu and Company, another from one Mirajuddin, an arms dealer of Indore and, thus, papers were there for the two pistols involved in the FIR. He took up a plea that he was a bona fide purchaser of the pistols from two arms dealers and he had sold these two pistols to customers in his capacity as a dealer in arms. It was submitted that he violated no provisions of law and the FIR should be quashed or, at least, he should be given a protection against arrest during investigation of the case. Initially, the prayer for quashing the FIR was not there but it was subsequently added by an amendment.

( 4 ) CRL. Misc. Application No. 4452 of 1997 of Ashiqur Rehman Khan deals with an FIR in case Crime No. 26 of 1996 under S. 25 of the Arms Act, P. S. Khitar, District Shahjehanpur, together with another FIR in case Crime No. 23 of 1996 under Ss. 420, 467 and 471, IPC of the same police station. He al