Supreme Court quashes cheating and forgery case against former Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal, son Sukhbir Singh Badal

The Supreme Court on Friday quashed a a cheating and forgery case against former Chief Minister of Punjab Parkash Singh Badal and his son and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal [Sukhbir Singh Badal vs Balwant Khera and Ors.]. .A bench of Justices MR Shah and CT Ravikumar set aside an order of the Punjab & Haryana High Court that had rejected the plea by the Badals.The apex court noted that the Badals had been summoned to face the trial but none of the ingredients of the offences were made out against them.The Court determined that the Punjab & Haryana High Court ought to have quashed proceedings that would have been an abuse of the process of law. Hence, it quashed and set it aside. It also clarified that it had not expressed anything on the Constitution of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) party, and hence the pending proceedings before the Delhi High Court with respect to an order of the Election Commission of India (ECI), should not be influenced by the top court's verdict.."Under the circumstances to continue the criminal proceedings against the appellants – accused arising out of the complaint and to face the trial by the accused as per the summoning order is nothing but an abuse of process of law and court and this is a fit case to quash the entire criminal proceedings arising out of the complaint filed by the respondent No. 1 including the summoning order passed by the learned Trial Court," the Court stated..Parkash Singh Badal had passed away on April 25. .The verdict came on a plea filed by the Badals challenging an August 2021 decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court rejecting the plea to quash a cheating and forgery case against them.The case against them was filed by one Balwant Singh Khera accusing the SAD of submitting separate constitutions with the Gurdwara Election Commission and the ECI.The Supreme Court had in November stayed proceedings in the matter before a Punjab court, and issued notice. Khera, a resident of Hoshiarpur, had filed the criminal complaint before an Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate in 2009. It was alleged that on one hand, the party claimed to be a secular party and gave a declaration to abide by the principles of secularism in its constitution filed before ECI.However, on the other hand, it was contesting elections for a religious body, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) , thereby giving it the colour of a religious party.The Badals and another accused, Daljit Singh Cheema, had moved the present plea before the top court challenging the proceedings before the Magistrate..Senior Advocates RS Cheema and KV Viswanathan appeared for Sukhbir Singh Badal and Parkash Singh Badal respectively. Advocate Sandeep Kapur appeared for Daljit Singh Cheema.The petitions were filed through Karanjawala & Co., and the brief was led by Senior Partners Nandini Gore and Sandeep Kapur with advocates Virinder Pal Singh Sandhu, Aditi Bhatt, Tarannum Cheema, Tahira Karanjawala, Niharika Karanjawala, Apoorva Pandey, Arjun Sharma, Abhimanshu Dhyani, Yash Dubey, G Kashyap, Sanya Dua, Rose Verma, Advocates.[Read judgment]