The judgment established the principle that a particular transaction can give rise to both criminal offense and civil liability, highlighting the distinction between civil and criminal liabilities and the standards of proof required in each.

Karuna Nand Bajpayee, J.

1. This application under Section 482 Cr.P.C. has been filed seeking the quashing of the entire proceeding of criminal case No. 775 of 2011 (Jagdish Singh v. Akhilesh Singh and others) under Section 419 , 420, 467, 468, I.P.C. P.S. Sahjanwa, district Gorakhpur, pending in the Court of A.C.J.M., Court No. 17 Gorakhpur.

Pleadings have been exchanged between the parties.

The contention of the counsel is that the alleged acts of forgery and fabrication and cheating committed by the applicant are based on the ground that the applicant has fabricated a will of Smt. Pyari Devi and thereafter attempted to grab her property on the basis of forged will. The submission is that the validity of the will is the subject matter of civil litigations which are going on between the applicant and opposite party. Further contention is that no final adjudication has been done so far in the civil litigation and the present complaint, therefore, has been brought prematurely in order to create pressure on the applicant so that he may not pursue the civil cases in right earnest. The submission is that the criminal prosecution is bad in the eyes of law in the wake of pendency of civil litigation between the parties with regard to the same documents. Certain other submissions on pure questions of fact have also been touched upon.

2. Sri Ashok Srivastava, advocate holding brief of Sri J.P. Mishra, learned counsel for opposite party, has rebutted the arguments placed on behalf of the applicant. The submission placed before the Court is that the criminal prosecution and the civil litigation are not mutually exclusive proceedings and it cannot be said either as a matter of law or even of prudence that in the wake of pendency of one proceeding another proceeding shall automatically get rendered not maintainable. Further submission is that actually after forging the will of the same Smt. Pyari Devi, the applicant had also got the lady murdered and a criminal prosecution of murder is also going on against him with regard to the same offence which is also a strong circumstance to indicate the forgery as, it has been argued, that the applicant in order to grab her property has got her eliminated. All, other factual submissions made on behalf of the applicant have also been vehemently opposed by the learned counsel who has placed his rival version regarding the same.

3. The Court has considered the rival arguments made at bar and perused the record in the light of the same. So far as maintainability of criminal prosecution in the wake of the civil litigation pending in between the parties is concerned the law on the point is well settled by Hon'ble Apex Court.

4. A particular transaction can give rise to a criminal offence and also a civil liability both. The civil cases are to be decided on the basis of preponderance of the probability while in the criminal cases, the offence has got to be proved beyond all reasonable doubt. There are several reliefs which can only be sought in a Civil Court. If a will has been forged, or if the sale deed has been forged, the aggrieved party has to move in the Civil Court in order to get it cancelled. It is beyond the power and ambit of a criminal Court dealing with a criminal trial to do so and it cannot grant that relief. But if the same forgery has been done in pursuance of fabricating signatures or by committing some impersonation of any kind or any such other forgery which constitutes the culpable criminal offences, the same has to be brought to a logical end only in a criminal Court. Simply because a particular transaction is giving rise to some civil liability or has some civil overtones it shall not automatically render, the criminal prosecution infructuous. Of course there are cases and there are matters which are primarily and principally of civil nature and some times deliberately a party may give it an artificial complexion of criminal litigation. It is only in such cases that the Courts ste