Kashmir Impulse Desk

Srinagar, May 16 

The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh quashed a criminal case registered against a Delhi-based whistleblower, ruling that multiple first information reports (FIRs) arising from the same incident are impermissible under law and amount to abuse of judicial process.

A bench led by Justice M A Chowdhary set aside a November 1, 2021 order of a special mobile magistrate in Budgam directing registration of FIR No 327/2021 against Vishvendra Singh under provisions related to forgery and public mischief under the Indian Penal Code.

Singh had challenged the FIR before the high court, alleging that WTC Faridabad Infrastructure initiated multiple criminal proceedings against him in Srinagar, Budgam and New Delhi over the same allegations linked to a social media campaign.

According to court records, Singh claimed he had exposed an alleged real estate scam involving the WTC group and filed complaints before authorities in Delhi, following which the company launched retaliatory legal proceedings against him.

The court observed that the company had first secured a summoning order from the Chief Judicial Magistrate in Srinagar on October 7, 2021, and later approached a court in Budgam seeking registration of another case on the same allegations without disclosing the earlier proceedings.

The judgment described the conduct as a “deeply concerning pattern of non-disclosure” and held that concealment of earlier proceedings amounted to “fraud on the court and a gross abuse of the judicial process”.

The court said initiating proceedings in multiple jurisdictions over the same alleged social media activity was a “textbook example of forum shopping” intended to harass the petitioner and drain his resources.

Rejecting the argument that different offences justified separate proceedings, the court ruled that offences arising from the same occurrence could not be split into multiple complaints before different forums.

“All the offences arising out of the same occurrence are to be investigated and tried together,” the court said.

The judgment noted that both complaints filed in Srinagar and Budgam related to allegations surrounding a social media trend allegedly initiated against an event organised by the complainant company in Humhama near Srinagar in August 2021.

Describing the complaints as “carbon copies” of each other, the court held that the complainant could have sought action for all alleged offences in the first complaint itself.

Concluding that continuation of the Budgam FIR would amount to a “travesty of justice”, the court quashed the FIR and all consequential proceedings in Budgam.