Supreme Court objects to complainant filing protest petition 8 years after case was closed by police

The Supreme Court recently took strong exception to the complainant in a case filing a protest petition eight years after the case was closed by the police [Ramkumar Giri v. The State and Another]..The Court condemned the belated filing of a protest petition that implicated eight additional persons as accused, eight years after a second closure report was filed by the policeA Division Bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Augustine George Masih also noted that the complainant had not attributed any specific act to these new accused, who were not named in the First Information Report (FIR) registered in 2006. "Filing the protest petition and that also by incorporating the names of eight additional accused after a lapse of eight years from the second closure report, is itself an abuse of process of law," the Court said in its November 26 order..It proceeded to set aside a trial court's 2019 decision to take cognisance of the case against these accused persons based on the belated protest petition (a petition objecting to the closure of a criminal case by the police) filed by the complainant in 2017..The case dates back to 2006 when an FIR was registered against various persons for allegedly damaging a road by removing sand and gravel in four vehicles.However, the police filed a closure report in mid-2006, concluding that the complaint should be treated as a mistake of fact as no evidence was found at the place of occurrence.The complainant then filed an application seeking a re-investigation, which was allowed by a judicial magistrate on October 8, 2007. On August 18, 2009, the police again filed a closure report in which they came to the same conclusion that was recorded in the first closure report.Eight years later after the filing of the second closure report, on September 19, 2017, the complainant moved a protest petition. On the basis of this petition, the judicial magistrate recorded the statement of the complainant and took cognizance of a criminal case against the accused-appellants. The charges cited against them included the offences under Sections 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapon), 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant) and 506(ii) (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860.The accused persons challenged this development before the Madras High Court which refused to set aside the cognizance order of the magistrate..Aggrieved, the accused then approached the apex court, which granted them relief. "In our view, the High Court ought to have interfered and quashed the order of taking cognizance as far as the present appellants are concerned. Accordingly, the Appeals succeed. We set aside the impugned judgment. The order dated 1st March, 2019 taking cognizance of the case in PCR No.8/2019 by the learned Judicial Magistrate as against the appellants is hereby quashed," the top court said..Senior Advocates Jayanth Muth Raj and S Nandkumar and advocates Gowtham Kumar, Vinodh Kanna B, Pradeep Kumar Kar, Praveen K Joy, Deepika Nandakumar, Ardra M, Naresh Kumar and Aakash Elango, appeared for appellants-accused.Additional Advocate General V Krishnamurthy, advocates Sabarish Subramanian, C Kranthi Kumar, Vishnu Unnikrishnan, Azka Sheikh and Danish Saifi, appeared for State of Tamil Nadu.Advocates Anupam Kishore Sinha, Pradeep K Tiwari, Apoorv Jha, Sahitya Srivastava and Dr SK Saamy, appeared for the complainant..[Read Order]