Hon’ble Manoj Misra, J.—Heard Sri Alok Kumar Yadav for the applicants; the learned AGA for the State; Sri Manik Chandra Yadav for the opposite party No. 2 and perused the record.

2. The instant application under Section 482 CrPC has been filed seeking quashing of the proceeding of case No. 1376 of 2013 (Uma Shankar Bhattacharya v. Dinesh Singh Yadav and others), under Sections 419 and 420 IPC, police station Daraganj, district Allahabad, pending in the Court of Special Chief Judicial Magistrate, Allahabad.

3. Briefly stated the facts giving rise to this application are that the opposite party No. 2 filed a complaint against the applicants alleging therein that Saroj Yadav (applicant No. 1) had entered into a registered agreement for sale dated 9th March, 2007 with the complainant thereby agreeing to execute sale-deed in respect of her share in House No. 82/62, Matiyara Road for which the applicant No. 1 took Rs. 1 lac by way of earnest money and, thereafter, further sum of Rs. 50,000/- was taken by her husband Dinesh Singh Yadav (applicant No. 2) and his brother Ravi Karan Yadav (applicant No. 3), but despite having taken Rs. 1,50,000/- they did not execute sale-deed in favour of the complainant and, later, on 7th May, 2011, a sale-deed was executed in favour of one Suman Bajpayee for a sum of Rs. 6,50,000/-. Similar allegations have been made in the statements recorded under Sections 200 and 202 CrPC.

4. The quashing of the complaint and the proceeding in pursuance thereof has been sought on the ground that the allegations made in the complaint only make out a civil cause of action, inasmuch as, there is nothing in the complaint or in the statement in support thereof to suggest that there had been a dishonest intention on the part of the applicants from the very beginning that is at the time of entering into agreement for sale. It has been submitted that in the agreement for sale, the total consideration for the sale was fixed at Rs. 2,50,000/- and as balance payment was not made and more than three years passed from the date of the agreement, sale-deed was executed in favour of third party. It has been argued that ordinarily where no date is fixed for execution of sale-deed, the limitation for instituting a suit for specific performance on the agreement for sale would be three years from the date of execution of agreement and since, admittedly, no suit was instituted within the period of limitation, the complaint, which has been lodged after six years from the date of the agreement, is nothing but abuse of the process of law. It has also been pleaded that the complainant had failed to arrange for the balance amount therefore he cannot claim now that the applicants have failed to execute the sale-deed despite promise. It has been submitted that the complaint has been lodged only after the civil proceeding had become barred by time, which clearly goes to show malicious intention on the part of opposite party No. 2 in filing the complaint.

5. Some dispute with regards to the amount advanced to the applicants is also there but that is not relevant for deciding this case.

6. Learned counsel for the opposite party No. 2 submitted that since the applicant No. 1 had received part of the sale consideration and the applicant No. 2 had, subsequently, received further amount of Rs. 50,000/- and without returning back the money to the opposite party No. 2, they have sold the property to a third party clearly shows that they had been dishonest.

7. Before the Court proceeds to assess whether a case has been made out for quashing of the complaint, it would be useful to first discuss the law on the issue as to whether in a case of simple breach of contract an offence of cheating would be made out or not, if so, then under what circumstances. In the case Dalip Kaur v. Jagnar Singh, (2009) 14 SCC 696, the Apex Court, in paragraph 10 of the report, observed that: “If the dispute between the parties was essentially a civil dispute result