The main legal point established in the judgment is that the criminal antecedents and proclaimed offender status of the applicants outweighed the applicability of legal provisions and precedents cited by them, leading to the rejection of their anticipatory bail application.

JUDGMENT :

1. Heard P.K. Singh, learned counsel for the applicants and Sri Kamlesh Kumar Dwivedi, learned counsel for the informant as well as Sri Vibhav Anand Singh, learned A.G.A. for the State.

2. The present anticipatory bail application has been filed on behalf of the applicants, Lakhan Singh and Dinesh, in F.I.R./Case Crime No. 258 of 2021, under Sections 420, 467, 468, 471, 386, 120B, 504, 506, 409, 34 of IPC, Police Station-Shamshabad, District-Agra, with a prayer to enlarge them on anticipatory bail.

PROSECUTION STORY

3. As per prosecution story, the informant is a farmer by profession and he is even involved in the cultivation of agricultural land of his brother-in-law Lokendra Singh and gets the benefit thereon. He also sows the land of other persons on contract. The informant is stated to have placed 713 bags of potatoes of his own and 1018 bags of potatoes of his brother-in-law Lokendra Singh in the cold storage owned by Bhagwan Singh and his family members. The main accused Bhagwan Singh, in collusion with the applicants, is stated to have been running the said cold storage without licence and they all are stated to have refused to return the said potatoes and the bags thereof to the informant. The applicants and other co-accused persons are stated to have illegally sold the said potatoes thereby defrauded the informant. The informant is stated to be having receipts of the said deposition of the potato bags.

RIVAL CONTENTIONS

4. Learned counsel for the applicants has stated that the applicants have been falsely implicated in the present case. The informant is the maternal uncle of Ravi Parihar son of Lokendra Singh who has registered another FIR No.192 of 2020 against the applicants on almost identical allegations. Learned counsel has further stated that the present FIR has been instituted against the applicants out of vengeance and the allegations in both the FIRs are in-verbatim of each other. The present FIR is hit by Section 300 Cr.P.C. as the applicants have been put to double jeopardy by the said FIR. He has further stated that the complainant at the instance of his nephew and brother-in-law has lodged this false and frivolous FIR.

5. Learned counsel has also placed much reliance upon an application sent by Lokendra Singh, brother-in-law of the informant to the Regional Manager of Canara Bank on 23.6.2020 wherein it has been stated that he is residing at Thane in Maharashtra and, as such, he is unable to come to the State of U.P. owing to lockdown imposed due to Covid-19 pandemic. He has further stated that the money being procured from the farmer by Bhagwan Singh may be deposited in the account for the payment of the CC Limit. The said letter is filed as Annexure-6 to the affidavit accompanying the instant anticipatory bail application. He has also stated that there is no whispering of the said letter in the instant FIR lodged by the informant.

6. Learned counsel has further stated that the matter is a civil dispute between the two directors and the brother-in-law of the informant has filed a case before the Company Law Tribunal on 30.9.2021 and just to harass the applicants, absolutely vague allegations have been levelled against them. The co-accused Gaurav and Banti @ Brijesh have already been enlarged on regular bail by another Bench of this Court passed in Criminal Misc. Bail Application Nos. 27619 of 2022 and 28072 of 2022 vide orders dated 21.7.2022 and 4.8.2022, respectively. The applicants have no concern whatsoever with the business transactions of the co-accused Bhagwan Singh as they live separately and they are not a beneficiary to the business transactions conducted by him. They have been falsely implicated owing to their relationship with the co-accused Bhagwan Singh.

7. To buttress his arguments, learned counsel has placed much reliance upon the judgement of the Apex Court passed in Upkar Singh Versus Ved Prakash and Others, (2004) 13 SCC 292, wherein it has been laid down that the legal right of an a