The allegations made in the FIR had an overwhelmingly and predominatingly a civil flavour, the Supreme Court remarked while quashing a criminal proceedings.
The bench of Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and Vikram Nath observed that inherent powers should be exercised in a given and deserving case where the Court is satisfied that exercise of such power would either prevent abuse of such power or such exercise would result in securing the ends of justice.
In this case, the complainant alleged that he had paid money to the accused to get employment for his son abroad. That they did not honour their promise and harassed his son and did not arrange for a job as per their promise. The High Court dismissed the petition filed by the accused and declined to quash the proceedings on the ground that a perusal of the FIR goes to show that the name of the accused is specifically mentioned in the FIR and criminal acts have been attributed to him.
Referring to the decision in Gian Singh vs State of Punjab, the court observed that criminal cases having overwhelmingly and predominatingly civil flavour stand on a different footing for the purposes of quashing, particularly the offences arising from commercial, financial, mercantile, civil, partnership or such like transactions or the offences arising out of matrimony relating to dowry, etc. or the family disputes where the wrong is basically private or personal in nature and the parties have resolved their entire dispute.