HC Quashes SC/ST Act Case Against Seven in Jigani Property Dispute

The Karnataka High Court has quashed criminal proceedings against seven persons from Anekal taluk, observing that the case stemmed from a property dispute in Jigani and amounted to an abuse of the process of law.

The accused had been booked under Sections 3(1)(r), 3(1)(s), 3(1)(t), 3(1)(a), and 3(1)(za) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, alongside Sections 329, 351, and 45 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

The criminal complaint had been filed by a woman named Uma, who alleged that the accused, including a person named Manjunath, had removed the tombstone of her late father from a property in Jigani. She also alleged that the accused abused her and her family members by referring to their caste.

In their petition before the High Court, the accused contended that the property belonged to them and noted that a civil suit regarding ownership of the land was already pending before a court. In response, the complainant claimed that the land in question was granted land.

Justice M Nagaprasanna observed that the dispute was civil in nature and that the origin and substance of the matter were unmistakably rooted in civil law. The court noted that an existing civil dispute being litigated before a civil court cannot be converted into a criminal case simply by introducing allegations of criminality.

The judge observed that criminal law cannot be permitted to become a weapon of reprisal or used to secure an advantage that a litigant failed to obtain through civil court proceedings. The court held that using criminal prosecution as a pressure tactic during an ongoing property dispute constituted an abuse of the judicial process.

Justice Nagaprasanna added that courts exercising jurisdiction under Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, which corresponds to Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, must scrutinise the circumstances behind complaints when pre-existing civil disputes exist to ensure criminal law is not being weaponised by disgruntled litigants.