The court ruled that allegations of cheating and copyright infringement were insufficient to constitute criminal offenses, emphasizing the need for evidence of fraudulent intent.

ORDER :

(E.V. VENUGOPAL, J.)

1 This criminal petition, under Section 482 Cr.P.C, is filed seeking to quash the proceedings against the petitioners herein in C.C.No.661 of 2021 on the file of the Court of the III Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Hyderabad, registered for the offences punishable under Section 420 of IPC and Section 63 of the Copyright Act, 1957 and Section 65 of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

2 The facts in brief are that the complainant is the CEO and authorized signatory of Rachana Television Pvt. Ltd., having office located at Plot No.564-A-19/ III, Road No. 92, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad. The petitioners are running a firm under name and style as Nord Sinew Technologies India Private Limited having their office at No. 301, Port Stadium Area, Green Park Colony, Balayya Sastri Layout, Seethammadara, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. The second respondent herein lodged a complaint with the Banjara Police, Hyderabad, stating that the first petitioner herein has illegally and unauthorisedly committed theft of the programmes that were telecast in their channels and was illegally up-linking the same content to their link channels in United States of America and other areas for the last four years. Based on the above, a case in Cr.No.1381 of 2015 was registered for the above stated offences and investigated into. During the course of investigation, the investigating officer apprehended the first petitioner, who voluntarily pleaded guilty of committing the offence along with the second petitioner herein.

3 During the course of investigation the first petitioner confessed that the second petitioner used to take agreement from the management of Telugu and other channels on contract basis and used to transmit them to America. The second petitioner entered into agreement with Rachana Television to transmit the TV Channels from India to America in the year 2011. This agreement was with a plan to take the signals from NTV in a clandestine way to transmit the material from Hyderabad to USA. The petitioners have worked a plan and did not pay a single penny to Rachana Television and transmitted the content of Rachana Television 1.e. NTV, Bhakti TV and Vanitha TV through internet and took this content into the hard disk. Through this hard disk they have sent the content to America under the name of Sneha Media through their own satellite towards America. Though they have used this since last four years, he admitted that they have not paid any money towards Rachana Television, and they were using the premises to do this streaming and converting the streaming material into the hard disk. On being shown by the accused, the investigating officer seized the Hard disk namely 1) Hard Disc Seagate-3 Nos, 2) Sony DV Cam small cassettes, 3) Panasony mini DV-4 Nos, 4) CDs 4-Nos, and also phone cell phone make Lenovo with SIM 9908955899 which were used in the commission of offence and the same were seized in presence of panchas.

4 The seized material has been forwarded to FSL for analysis and the FSL authorities after analyzing the material have issued a report vide COM/ 45/ 2016 dated 05.02.2018 in which he stated as follows:

1) Item Nos.1 to 3 are not accessible to the tools / software present in TSFSL. Hence they could not be analyzed.

2) Item Nos.4 to 7 are in working condition.

2.1) Item Nos. 4 to 7 contained several video files in ".rm" file format. I have viewed some of these video files and found "SNEHA TELEVISION" logo & "HAVINA ENTERPRISES CREATIONS" in the beginning of each video. I have captured three screenshots from one of these videos and furnished in hard copy marked by me as "ANNEXURE-I COM/ 45/ 2016".

3) Lenovo mobile phone Item No.8 is password/ pattern protected. Hence data could not be retrieved from the phone memory with the existing tools / software's present in TSFSL.

3.1) Contents retrieved from two Airtel SIM Cards of item No.8 are furnished in Hard copy marked by me as "ANNEXURE-II COM/ 45/ 2016".

5 Basing on th