A person invoking the court's equitable jurisdiction must come with clean hands and disclose all material facts.

JUDGMENT :

Sharad Kumar Sharma, J.

To begin with, this Court is of the view, that a litigant, who doesn’t come with clean hands and doesn’t disclose a vital fact, which may have a crucial bearing on consideration of a proceeding on merits by the High Court, in the exercise of its inherent jurisdiction, is not even required to be heard on merits, even if he has an alleged good case. Particularly in the case at hand, where the applicant, who has put a challenge to the cognizance/summoning order dated 02.08.2022, as it was passed in a SST No. 515 of 2022, State Vs. Satnam Singh and others, whereby he has been tried for the offences under Sections 8/18/27A/29 of the N.D.P.S. Act.

2. Considering a person’s judicial remedy to put a challenge to the summoning order or a Chargesheet as the case may be, particularly in relation to the NDPS cases, the history of the applicant/accused always play the pivotal role as to be a ground for invocation of inherent jurisdiction.

3. Any person, who conceals the fact or misleads the Court by pleading, that he has got no criminal history, is not even required to be heard by the Court if it is later on found otherwise. This would be the case, which carries these examples for the reason being in para 23, the applicant has pleaded accordingly.

“23. That present Applicant has no criminal history and as much as he has never been convicted in any case.”

4. This para has been pleaded on the ground of personal knowledge in the affidavit that he has got no criminal history.

5. When the matter was taken up on 18.10.2022, the Court posed a question to the counsel for the applicant as to whether the applicant carries the criminal history or not. He was directed to file a supplementary affidavit, which he has done, in which there is a disclosure of fact, that the applicant does carry a criminal history and has prior a N.D.P.S. case to his credit.

6. What effect would the earlier case would have or what effect would the bail granted in that case would have, could have been an issue which could be permitted to be argued, had that fact been disclosed by the applicant when initially the C482 Application was filed.

7. Non-disclosure of this fact itself is sufficient to dismiss the present C482 Application in the light of the judgment of the Hon’ble Apex Court, as reported in AIR 1993 SC 852, The Ramjas Foundation and others Vs. Union of India and others, the relevant part of paragraph No. 7 of the said judgment is extracted hereunder:-

“7…………….. It is well settled that a person invoking an equitable extraordinary jurisdiction of the Court under Article 226 of the Constitution is required to come with clean hands and should not conceal the material facts………………”

8. In the case of G. Narayanaswamy Reddy (dead) by L.Rs and another Vs. Government of Karnataka and another as reported in AIR 1991 SC 1726, the Hon’ble Apex Court, the relevant part of its para 2, it has been held as under:-

2. ….In our view, the said interim orders have a direct bearing on the question raised and the nondisclosure of the same certainly amounts to suppression of material facts. On this ground alone, the Special Leave Petitions are liable to be rejected. It is well-settled in law that the relief under Article 136 of the Constitution is discretionary and a petitioner who approaches this Court for such relief must come with frank and full disclosure of facts. If he fails to do so and suppresses material facts, his application is liable to be dismissed. We accordingly dismiss the Special Leave Petitions.”

9. Another judgment as reported in 1994 (6) SCC 620, K.R. Srinivas Vs. R.M. Premchand and others, the Hon’ble Apex Court, in its para 7 has held as under:-

“7. It cannot be forgotten that a writ petitioner who comes to the court for relief in public interest must come not only with clean hands, like any other writ petitioner, but must further come with a clean heart, clean mind and a clean objective. We cannot assume that Dr R.M. Premchand, who at the releva