Chandigarh, Feb 9: Major legal relief for AAP MLA Harmeet Singh Pathanmajra, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has set aside an FIR and summoning orders related to allegations of filing a false election affidavit. The court ruled that the investigation and the subsequent judicial summons were fundamentally flawed due to a failure to adhere to the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) regarding non-cognizable crimes.
Pathanmajra, represented by counsel Sunny Saggar, had challenged the FIR registered just days before the 2022 Assembly elections at the Julkan police station. The complaint, initiated by an election official, claimed that the candidate had misrepresented facts in his official nomination papers. However, the High Court noted that the law strictly prohibits police from investigating such matters without a specific directive from a Magistrate.
“Resultantly, lodging of the FIR as well as the investigation carried out was without jurisdiction,” Justice Tribhuvan Dahiya mentioned in the judgment. He noted that the mandatory procedure under Section 155 of the CrPC was bypassed, meaning the police had no legal standing to lodge the FIR or pursue the matter in the manner they did.
The judgment also mentioned significant errors in the lower court’s handling of the complaint. Justice Dahiya noted that the Chief Judicial Magistrate in Patiala should not have treated the Returning Officer’s letter to the police as a valid basis for a complaint case. He mentioned that the law requires a specific jurisdictional flow which was entirely absent in this instance.
“Lodging of the FIR as well as passing of the summoning order was without jurisdiction,” Justice Dahiya directly said. He noted that the petition sought to quash the order dated April 13, 2023, which had treated the administrative letter as a formal criminal complaint. By allowing the petition, the High Court has quashed the FIR and all subsequent proceedings, noting that the procedural safeguards designed to prevent unauthorized investigations were disregarded in this case.
