Point of Law: Set of acts or omissions may constitute offences under different enactments and where there are two distinct offences disclosed, made up of different ingredients, punishment in both would be permissible even if the offences have some overlapping features.

JUDGMENT :

ASHWANI KUMAR MISHRA, J.

1. Jurisdiction of this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India is invoked in the present bunch of writ petitions, filed with the prayer to quash the First Information Report in Case Crime No. 47 of 2022, under Sections 406, 409, 420, 467, 468, 471, 477-A and 120-B IPC, Police Station Phase-I, District Commissionerate Gautam Buddh Nagar, as also the order dated 18.2.2022 passed by the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Gautam Buddh Nagar directing lodging of aforesaid FIR, primarily on the ground that offences alleged therein are essentially in the nature of commercial dispute, which ought to have been resolved by way of arbitration and lodgement of first information report is an abuse of the process of law.

2. The informant company and its authorized signatory i.e. respondent no. 3 and 4 have appeared on a caveat and have objected to the maintainability of the writ petition, at this stage, urging that prima-facie commissioning of cognizable offence is disclosed in the F.I.R. and the investigating agencies be allowed to proceed with the investigation and the rights and contentions advanced, on behalf of the petitioners, be left open for its examination upon conclusion of investigation. It is stressed that extent of offence since is yet to be determined, therefore, investigation into allegations are necessary before embarking upon adjudication of questions raised in these writ petitions. Arguments accordingly have been concluded by the respective counsel for the parties on the aspect relating to entertainability of the present writ petition, at this stage and the need to interfere with the impugned First Information Report, as of now. The writ petitions, accordingly, are being disposed off by this common judgment with Writ Petition No. 2672 of 2022 (Sharad Arora and Another vs. State of U.P. and Others) treated as the leading case.

3. We have heard Sri Dileep Kumar, learned Senior Counsel assisted by Sri Sudhanshu Kumar, Sri Manish Singh, Mr. Rajrshi Gupta and Sri Ramesh Chandra Yadav for the petitioners, Sri Arunendra Singh, learned AGA for the State and Sri Aman Lekhi learned Senior Counsel assisted by Sri Krishnarjun, Ms. Katyayini, Ms. Ranjana Roy Gaurai, Sri Ujjwal Jain, Ms. Niharika Behl and Smt. Diksha Mishra for the respondents.

4. Brief facts giving rise to the filing of instant writ petitions are that the petitioners in leading writ petition are the founder promoters and directors of a company named ‘Sensorise Digital Services Private Limited (hereinafter referred to as ‘SDSPL’) which is engaged in the business of providing ‘mission critical connectivity services’ for Machine-to-Machine (M2M)/Internet of Things (IoT) by utilizing a technology, which is claimed to be open and fully standardized as per available global standards and registered as trademark ‘QoSim’. This technology is claimed to have existed since late 1990s and was commonly used for ‘plastic roaming’. SDSPL QoSim is stated to be a product based on the said solution concept and according to petitioners the product being standard based product has no confidential technology attached to it. SDSPL’s Intellectual Property (IP) is restricted to ‘QoSim’ trademark. When used in the AIS-140 compliance use cases, the SDSPL QoSim is certified alongwith the device that it is embedded in and the certification belongs to the Device partner. SDSPL buys SIM cards from IIIrd Party manufacturers who own the IP and all the software on the card apart from the pre-requisite certifications for the manufacturing process are purchased from outside. SDSPL’s customers allegedly are governmental or non-governmental agencies and the services are provided under well defined service level agreements.

5. SDSPL is otherwise a start-up company. It appears that the company needed infusion of funds to grow further and came in contact with the informant, which also is a company in the name of ‘KKH Finvest Private Limited’ (hereinafter referred to as the