IN THE HIGH COURT AT CALCUTTA

CRIMINAL REVISIONAL JURISDICTION

APPELLATE SIDE

PRESENT:

THE HON’BLE JUSTICE UDAY KUMAR

CRR 1336 of 2018

Dr. Arun Sankar Syamal @ Arun Sankar Syamal

-Vs-

The State of West Bengal & Anr.

For the Petitioner : Mr. Mritunjoy Chatterjee

For the Opposite Party No. 2 : Mr. Sagnik Roy Chowdhury

Mr. Trijit Mitra

For the State : Mr. Dipankar Paramaick

Hearing concluded on : 31.10.2025 Judgment on : 14.11.2025

UDAY KUMAR, J.: –

1. Invoking the extraordinary inherent jurisdiction vested under Section 482 of

the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (Cr.P.C.), the petitioner seeks the quashing of the entirety of the criminal proceedings arising from Ramnagar P.S. Case No. 02 of 2018. The petitioner, Dr. Arun Sankar Syamal, a highly distinguished retired academician, is charged with grave offences, including those under Sections 447, 323, 325, 354 (Outraging Modesty/Molestation), 506, and 379 (Theft) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The initiation of these charges, particularly the allegations of molestation (S. 354 IPC) and theft (S. 379 IPC), is prima facie suspect and must be scrutinized against the backdrop of a long-standing proprietary (civil) feud. The core assertion of this petition is that the prosecution is not grounded in a genuine offence but constitutes a

patent and manifest abuse of the process of law, maliciously orchestrated following the Opposite Party’s decisive civil defeat.

2. The foundational facts unequivocally establish that the prosecution is not a genuine pursuit of justice but rather the direct result of malicious retaliation stemming from this protracted proprietary dispute between the petitioner and his brother’s family. The petitioner’s title to the property was definitively secured in a partition suit, a judgment affirmed by this Hon’ble Court in F.A. No. 08 of 2004. This conclusive proprietary defeat suffered by the Opposite Party No. 2’s family furnishes the undeniable and overriding motive for the institution of the instant criminal action.

The Vitiating Chronology (Structural Fabrication)

3. The fabricated nature and inherent malice of the charges are conclusively confirmed by the vitiating chronology of events. The opposite party no. 2's earliest legal recourse—the Section 107 Cr.P.C. proceeding filed on October 23, 2017, immediately post-incident—conspicuously omitted any mention of the grave, non-bailable offences of outraging modesty (S. 354 IPC) or the snatching of a gold chain (S. 379 IPC). Crucially, these serious charges were only introduced in the impugned First Information Report (FIR) lodged 85 days later (January 01, 2018). This fundamental chronological inconsistency establishes that the allegations of grave offences were a calculated and concocted afterthought, maliciously introduced solely to impart unwarranted severity to an otherwise minor, false complaint, thereby ensuring the harassment and potential custodial detention of the Petitioner.

4. The central question for this Court’s determination is:

“Whether the criminal proceeding arising from Ramnagar P.S. Case No. 02 of 2018 is, in substance, a patent and manifest abuse of the process of law, orchestrated by the Opposite Party No. 2 with an ulterior motive to settle a civil proprietary score, thereby warranting intervention under the inherent powers of Section 482 Cr.P.C.?”

5. Mr. Mritunjoy Chatterjee, Learned Advocate for the petitioner, submitted that the continuation of these proceedings constitutes a patent and manifest abuse of the process of law. He argued that the criminal complaint is a direct retaliatory measure following a definitive legal defeat, squarely bringing the case within the ambit of proceedings "maliciously instituted with an ulterior motive for wreaking vengeance," as contemplated by the Bhajan Lal guidelines. He emphasized that the conspicuous omission of the grave charges in the earliest legal documentation (S. 107 Cr.P.C. proceeding) is not a mere dispute of fact, but a legal failure demonstrating that the prose