Srinagar, Oct 23, KDC: The High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh has dismissed a petition seeking the quashing of a cheating case against a man who allegedly posed as an Amity University executive to induce a Srinagar landlord into spending Rs 25 lakh on building renovations.
Justice Yash Paul Bourney declined to exercise the court’s extraordinary jurisdiction to quash the First Information Report (FIR) and the subsequent charge-sheet against Burhan Ahmad Beigh, observing that the allegations extended beyond a simple contractual breach and prima facie disclosed the commission of a criminal offence.
The dispute centers on a rent agreement executed in August 2017 for a commercial space at the Hadika Complex in Bhagat Barzulla. According to the police complaint filed by the building owner, Gulam Nabi Khan, Beigh approached him for office space while falsely projecting himself as an Assistant General Manager of Amity University, Gurugram.
The complaint alleged that Beigh initially sought space to facilitate college admissions but later claimed he needed the entire 20,000-square-foot building to set up operations for Big Basket and Pacific Group companies.
“Acting upon such representations, respondent No. 5 [Khan] allegedly incurred expenditure of approximately Rs. 25.00 lakh on modifications to the premises in accordance with the requirements conveyed by the petitioner,” the court said in its judgment.
Khan alleged that after taking possession of the third floor for a monthly rent of Rs 1.40 lakh, Beigh defaulted on payments from the very next month, locked the premises, and evaded paying electricity charges. Khan’s suspicions grew, and upon verifying with Amity University, he discovered that Beigh had no association whatsoever with the institution. Consequently, FIR No. 207/2018 was registered at Police Station Sadder for cheating and impersonation under Sections 419 and 420 of the RPC.
Seeking the quashment of the proceedings, Beigh’s counsel, Advocate Ateeb Kanth, argued before the High Court that the dispute was “purely of civil nature” and was being given a criminal color to harass his client. He contended that for an offence of cheating to be established, a dishonest intention must exist right from the inception, and any subsequent disagreement or breach of contract “would not constitute the offence of cheating.”
Rejecting this argument, Justice Bourney observed that the case involved specific allegations of false representation purposely made to induce the landlord to part with the possession of his property and incur substantial expenditure.
At this stage, the court noted, the allegations cannot be treated as disclosing “merely a subsequent breach of contractual obligations, divorced from the alleged initial representations.”
The High Court also took note of submissions by Senior Advocate Z. A. Qureshi, representing the landlord, and the government counsel, who pointed out that Beigh had evaded the investigating agency.
The court recorded that the petitioner “neither appeared before the Investigating Agency nor has surrendered before the court below,” prompting the police to initiate proceedings to declare him an absconder.
Clarifying that its observations were strictly prima facie and would not influence the final outcome of the trial, the High Court directed the lower court to proceed with the matter independently in accordance with the law. (KDC)
