A person cannot be prosecuted individually for a company's offense unless they are shown to be directly responsible.

1. The petitioners have invoked inherent jurisdiction of this Court under S.482 of Code of Criminal Procedure,1973 (Cr.PC, for short) for quashment of the complaint titled 'Department of Agriculture v. Rema Arora and others' and the cognizance order dated 04.09.2020 passed by the court of learned Judcial Magistrate, 1st Class, (Munisff), Chadoora, Budgam (trial court, for short).

2. The case set out by the petitioners is that they are employees of M/s Agro Care Organic Farm Private Limited Company involved in manufacturing of fertilizers, including Bio Fertilizers such as Vermicompost (soil food). Petitioner No. 2 / accused No. 2 in the complaint, sent an intimation to the respondents for taking samples of Vermicompost from Batch No. AOF / 105 received on 28.02.2016. It is allegation of the petitioners that the respondent did not take the sample for analysis in accordance with the procedure provided by Fertilizers Control Order, 1985 (hereinafter referred as "FCO of 1985"). Thereafter respondent seized the fertilizer from godowns of the Company i.e, M/s Agro Care Organic Farm Private Limited Company located at Nowgam Bypass, Srinagar alleging that same was not according to the specifications of FCO of 1985. Consequently, the complaint came to be filed by the respondents against the petitioners under Clause 19(a) of the FCO, 1985 read with S.7 of the Essential Commodities Act, 1955 (EC Act for short) and impugned cognizance was taken by learned trial court.

3. The petitioners have questioned the complaint filed by the respondent and consequent cognizance taken by learned trial court primarily on the ground that respondent had filed a similar complaint with respect to same Batch of vermicompost i.e, Batch No. AOF / 105 manufactured and distributed by same Company i.e, M/s Agro Care Organic Farm Private Limited, pending disposal in the court of Judge Small Causes, Srinagar. It is also submission of the petitioners that petitioner No. 1 / accused No. 1 is also same in both the complaints. It is contention of the petitioners that a person cannot be prosecuted twice for the same offence and two trials pertaining to same occurrence / offence is not permissible under law.

4. The petitioners have also assailed the impugned complaint and the impugned order of cognizance on the ground that in the absence of company being an accused in the complaint, they cannot be prosecuted and held liable in their individual capacity in terms of S.10 of EC Act. According to the petitioners, they cannot be held responsible for the acts of the Company as there is nothing in the complaint to show that they were incharge and responsible for the conduct of the business of the company.

5. Per contra, respondent in its objections has failed to respond to the predominant grounds of challenge urged in the memo of petition.

6. Having heard rival contention of the parties, I have given my thoughtful consideration to the facts and circumstances emanating from the pleadings and the record as also the law governing the field.

7. Learned counsel for the petitioner while reiterating the grounds urged in the memo of petition has relied upon Krishna Lal Chawla v. State of UP ( 2021 (5) SCC 435 : (2021 CriLJ 2193 (SC))), Sharad Kumar Sanghi v. Sangita Rane (2015 (12) SCC 781 : (AIR 2015 SC (Supp) 2107)), Himanshu v. B. Shivamurthy ( 2019 (3) SCC 797 : (AIR 2019 SC 3052)), AneetaHada v. Godfather Travels and Tours Pvt. Ltd (2012 (5) SCC 661 : ( AIR 2012 SC 2795 )), MaksudSaiyad v. State of Gujarat ( 2008 (5) SCC 668 : (AIROnLine 2007 SC 332)), Sushil Sethi and others v. State of Arunachal Pradesh and others (AIR 2020 SC 765), Sandeep Singh an