Magistrates must provide a hearing to the concerned account holder before passing any order under Sections 451 and 457 of the Cr.P.C. involving the transfer of funds from a bank account to a complainant.

THIS CRL.P IS FILED U/S 482 CR.P.C. (FILED U/S 528 BNNS) BY THE ADVOCATE FOR THE PETITIONER PRAYING THAT THIS HONOURABLE COURT MAY BE PLEASED TO A. SET ASIDE THE IMPUGNED ORDER DATED 24.09.2025 BEARING FIR NO.31/2025 PENDING BEFORE THE HONBLE COURT OF THE II ADDL.SENIOR CIVIL JUDGE AND JMFC CHIKKABALLAPUR AND ETC.

THIS PETITION, COMING ON FOR ADMISSION, THIS DAY, ORDER WAS MADE THEREIN AS UNDER:

CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE M.NAGAPRASANNA

ORAL ORDER

The petitioner is before this Court calling in question an order of the concerned Court, which allows the application under Sections 454 and 457 of the Cr.P.C. filed by the second respondent - complainant and directing the defreezement of the account of the petitioner and transfer of the amount of Rs.5,00,000/- from the account of the petitioner. All these happen without even hearing the petitioner. This Court in way back in year 2022 had clearly directed that the concerned Court should not pass orders without hearing the person from whom the amount is to be transferred on answering an application under Sections 451 and 457 of the Cr.P.C. The courts are repeating the same mistake. Therefore, this Court in the case of Rahul Chari and Another v. State of Karnataka BY NORTH CEN POLICE AND OTHERS¹2022 SCC OnLine Kar 1967 has held as follows:

"12. The afore-narrated facts are not in dispute and therefore not reiterated. The 2nd petitioner is a Unified Payment Interface platform. All such UPI platforms are not owned by them. They are owned by the National Payments Corporation of India (‘NPCI’ for short) and legally the petitioners are considered as third party application provider by the NPCI or a system provider. In effect, regardless of different nomenclatures under different enactments, the UPI service providing entities like the 2nd petitioner/PhonePe have the status of intermediaries as obtaining under the Information Technology Act, 2000 (‘IT Act’ for short). Section 79 of the IT Act protects the intermediaries to the extent as obtaining under the provision. Section 79 of the IT Act reads as follows:

“79. Exemption from liability of intermediary in certain cases.–(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in any law for the time being in force but subject to the provisions of sub-sections (2) and (3), an intermediary shall not be liable for any third party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted by him.

(2) The provisions of sub-section (1) shall apply if–

(a) the function of the intermediary is limited to providing access to a communication system over which information made available by third parties is transmitted or temporarily stored or hosted; or

(b) the intermediary does not–

(i) initiate the transmission,

(ii) select the receiver of the transmission, and

(iii) select or modify the information contained in the transmission;

(c) the intermediary observes due diligence while discharging his duties under this Act and also observes such other guidelines as the Central Government may prescribe in this behalf.

(3) The provisions of sub-section (1) shall not apply if–

(a) the intermediary has conspired or abetted or aided or induced, whether by threats or promise or otherwise in the commission of the unlawful act;

(b) upon receiving actual knowledge, or on being notified by the appropriate Government or its agency that any information, data or communication link residing in or connected to a computer resource controlled by the intermediary is being used to commit the unlawful act, the intermediary fails to expeditiously remove or disable access to that material on that resource without vitiating the evidence in any manner.

Explanation.–For the purposes of this section, the expression “third party information” means any information dealt with by an intermediary in his capacity as an intermediary”.

Section 79 (supra) directs that notwithstanding anything contained in any law, an intermediary shall not be liable for any third party information, data or communicat