SHANTANU KUMAR SINGH vs THE STATE OF BIHAR

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA
CRIMINAL MISCELLANEOUS No.33896 of 2023
Arising Out of PS. Case No.-15 Year-2009 Thana- GOPALPUR District- Patna
======================================================
SHANTANU KUMAR SINGH SON OF GIRISHA NANDAN PRASAD
SINGH @ CHANCHAL KUMAR SINGH R/O Mohalla Belan Bazar P.S.-
Kasim Bazar, District- Munger
... ... Petitioner/s
Versus
1. THE STATE OF BIHAR Bihar
2. SHIVANI SINGH WIFE OF PREM NATH PRASAD R/O Premalok
Mission School, Maa Sharda Puram, Bairiya, P.S. Gopalpur, District- Patna
... ... Opposite Party/s
======================================================
with
CRIMINAL MISCELLANEOUS No. 14204 of 2020
Arising Out of PS. Case No.-15 Year-2009 Thana- GOPALPUR District- Patna
======================================================
SADHANA @ SADHANA JHA Wife of Shantanu Kumar Singh Resident of
Village - Nandan Bhawan, Belan Bazar, P.S.- Kasim Bazar, Dist.- Munger.
... ... Petitioner/s
Versus
1. THE STATE OF BIHAR Bihar
2. Shivani Singh Wife of Prem Nath Prasad Resident of Village - Premlok
Mission School, Maa Sharda Puram, Bairiya, P.S.- Gopalpur, Dist.- Patna.
... ... Opposite Party/s
======================================================
Appearance :
(In CRIMINAL MISCELLANEOUS No. 33896 of 2023)
For the Petitioner/s : Mr. P.N. Sahi, Sr. Advocate
: Mr. Shankar Kumar Choudhary, Advocate
: Mr. Amish Kumar, Advocate
: Mr.Patanjali Rishi, Advocate
For the State : Mr.Ajit Kumar, APP
For the O.P. No. 2 : Mr. Arbind Kr. Singh, Advocate
(In CRIMINAL MISCELLANEOUS No. 14204 of 2020)
For the Petitioner/s : Mr. P.N. Sahi, Sr. Advocate
: Mr. Shankar Kumar Choudhary, Advocate
: Mr. Amish Kumar, Advocate
: Mr.Patanjali Rishi, Advocate
For the State : Mr.Ajit Kumar, APP
For the O.P. No. 2 : Mr. Arbind Kr. Singh, Advocate
======================================================
CORAM: HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICE ANSUL
CAV JUDGMENT

Patna High Court CR. MISC. No.33896 of 2023 dt.21-07-2026
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Date : 21-07-2026

Heard learned counsel for the petitioners and learned
Additional Public Prosecutor for the State.
2. This application under Section 482 of the Code of
Criminal Procedure, 1973 has been filed for quashing of the order
dated 01.04.2023 passed by the learned Additional Sessions Judge
XXV, Patna in Cr. Revision No. 27 of 2020, by which the revision
filed against the order dated 20.12.2019 was dismissed. By the
order dated 20.12.2019, the learned Additional Chief Judicial
Magistrate IX, Patna had rejected the petitioner's application under
Section 239 Cr.P.C. seeking discharge in Gopalpur P.S. Case No.
15 of 2009, G.R. No. 963 of 2009. Consequential quashing of the
order dated 20.12.2019, and of the entire proceeding arising out of
the said case, has also been prayed for.
3. There are two petitioners. The petitioner in Cr. Misc.
No. 14204 of 2020 has challenged order dated 06.03.2014 passed
in Gopalpur P.S. Case No. 15 of 2009 passed by Shri Anil Kumar
Ram, JMFC, where her application under Section 239 has been
dismissed as well as the revisional order dated 28.11.2017 passed
by Additional Sessions Judge-XI in Cr. Rev. No. 4036 of 2014
where the revision against the order dated 06.03.2014 has been
dismissed.

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4. The prosecution rests on a written report given by the
informant Shivani Singh, Principal of Premalok Mission School,
Maa Sharda Puram, Bairiya, Patna, on the strength of which
formal F.I.R. bearing Gopalpur P.S. Case No. 15 of 2009 came to
be registered on 22.02.2009 under Sections 406, 420, 470, 471 and
120B of the Indian Penal Code. This written report is Annexure
P/1 to the present petition, and the same report also stands
reproduced word for word in the case diary. It states that the
petitioner was engaged as Desk Clerk in the school for the last few
years, that cheque books, admission registers, receipt books and
letter heads were kept in his custody inside an almirah of which he
alone held the key, that his conduct had been doubtful for about a
year, that he was warned time and again, and that he was finally
expelled from the school in November 2008. It goes on to say that
when inquiry was made thereafter, several documents were found
missing, and that the petitioner, when these were demanded of
him, first evaded the issue on one pretext or another and later
began threatening members of the school.
5. Shantanu Kumar Singh was alleged to be desk clerk.
Sadhna alias Sadhna Jha (wife of Shantanu Kumar Singh) is
alleged to be the Cashier. She has not been named in the FIR but

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has been added as an accused later on. There is no reference to her
in the FIR.
6. Investigation went on for close to two years, and
charge sheet no. 80 of 2010 was submitted on 31.07.2010 under
Sections 406, 420, 470, 471 and 120B I.P.C. Cognizance was taken
on 19.08.2010. The discharge petition that followed was rejected
on 20.12.2019, the revision against that rejection was dismissed on
01.04.2023, and the present petition has been filed against that
dismissal.
7. Learned counsel for the petitioners has taken this
Court through the record, including every annexure filed with the
petition, and has submitted with some force that what is being
prosecuted here as a case of employee theft is in truth a money
dispute between an aunt and her nephew Shantanu Kumar Singh
and that the timing of the F.I.R. coincides much too closely with
the dishonour of a cheque for a very large sum to be put down to
coincidence.
8. As averred in the petition, and supported by the
affidavit of the petitioner-Shantanu Kumar Singh’s uncle Mukesh
Nandan Prasad Singh sworn on 05.05.2023, the informant Shivani
Singh is the petitioner's own bua, his father's sister. It is stated that
Shantanu Kumar Singh had given financial assistance to the

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informant from time to time to help her set up Premalok Mission
School, and that this assistance in all totalled Rs. 56,00,000, fifty
six lakh rupees. When the petitioner-Shantanu Kumar Singh
sought return of this money, the informant is said to have issued
cheque no. 639190 dated 01.12.2008, drawn on Bank of Baroda,
Kankarbagh branch, Patna, from her account no.
27630100002413, for the full amount of Rs. 56,00,000. None of
this is a bald assertion. The cheque number, the account number,
the branch, and the amount are all set out with precision in the
petitioner's own complaint petition under Section 138 of the
Negotiable Instruments Act read with Section 418 I.P.C., registered
as Complaint Case No. 542(C) of 2009 before the learned C.J.M.,
Patna, which forms Annexure P/2 series to this petition.
9. This cheque, when presented for encashment at S.B.I.,
C.C.P.C., Patna on 17.01.2009, came back unpaid marked
"referred to drawer", vide reason no. 19 of the bank's own memo.
On 31.01.2009, the petitioner-Shantanu Kumar Singh caused a
legal notice to be issued through his advocate Sri Deo Baran
Singh, a true typed copy of which is Annexure P/2A, calling upon
the informant to pay back the amount within a fortnight, failing
which prosecution under Section 138 of the N.I. Act would follow.

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10. The cheque bounced on 17.01.2009. The legal notice
demanding fifty six lakh rupees went out on 31.01.2009. On
22.02.2009, barely three weeks after that notice, and within the
statutory period contemplated under Section 138 of the Negotiable
Instruments Act during which the informant herself was liable to
be proceeded against had she failed to make payment, she went to
the police station and got the present F.I.R. registered against the
very person pressing her for repayment. Her own statement on
oath dated 18.03.2009, recorded in the Section 138 proceeding and
forming part of Annexure P/2, bears out this very sequence in her
own words, namely the dishonour of the cheque, the meeting
between the parties, the notice issued through counsel, and only
thereafter the institution of the complaint case.
11. The written report at Annexure P/1 speaks only of
missing cheque books, registers, letter heads and receipt books,
and of a school defamed and children's futures put at risk. It makes
no reference whatsoever to the loan of fifty six lakh rupees, to the
dishonour of the cheque, or to the legal notice served upon her
barely three weeks earlier. Three facts, each of them bearing
directly on her own motive, are simply left out of the report. An
informant does not ordinarily forget a cheque for fifty six lakh
rupees, and a lawyer's notice served on her three weeks before she

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walked into the police station, when she sits down to lodge a
report of theft. This Court is not able to treat an omission of that
kind, on the facts of this case, as an accident.
12. The F.I.R. conceals the relationship itself as well.
The informant nowhere discloses in her written report that the
person she is accusing of theft and breach of trust is her own
nephew, her brother's son and his wife. This too is a material
suppression. The report is written in the language of employee
misconduct and of theft from a school. What lies underneath it, on
the material now before this Court, is a money dispute between an
aunt and her nephew. Because the relationship and the loan are
both kept out of the report, a person reading it has no means of
seeing this, and a family quarrel over the return of money is left to
read as an ordinary case of breach of trust.
13. The written report says the conduct of Shantanu
Kumar Singh had been doubtful "for the past one year" and that he
was actually expelled in November 2008, once documents were
found missing on inquiry. If that were so, the F.I.R. should have
followed close on the heels of November 2008. Instead it came on
22.02.2009, nearly four months later, and, as already noted above,
within days of the legal notice demanding fifty six lakh rupees.
The petitioner-Shantanu Kumar Singh had specifically raised this

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very point as ground (v) in his revision, that no explanation was
ever given by the prosecution for this inordinate delay, and the
impugned order passed by the learned Additional Sessions Judge is
silent on it altogether.
14. Learned counsel for the petitioners also relied on
Annexure P/3, the reply dated 02.05.2011 received from the
Central Board of Secondary Education under the Right to
Information Act, 2005, together with the extension of affiliation
application filed by the school itself in the year 2008, that is, in the
very period the petitioners are alleged to have worked there. This
document runs into several pages and sets out the particulars of the
teaching staff of Premalok Mission School as furnished by the
school to the Board, name by name, with qualifications, date of
birth, subjects taught and pay scale. It is a document the school
prepared for its own regulatory purpose, at the very time the
petitioner is said to have held the keys to its cheque books and
registers. His name is not there. If he had truly held such a position
of trust in the school during 2008, some trace of that employment
ought to have surfaced in the school's own submission to its
regulatory board made in that very period. It has not. That weakens
the informant's claim considerably.

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15. The petitioner-Shantanu Kumar Singh is stated to
have been practicing as an advocate since 2004 and an income tax
assessee since 2005. Whether a practicing advocate could at the
same time have held the post of Desk Clerk in a school is a matter
the investigating agency could easily have checked. Nothing on
the record shows this obvious line of enquiry was ever pursued.
16. On the intervention of his own father, The petitioner-
Shantanu Kumar Singh withdrew Complaint Case No. 542(C) of
2009 by filing a petition under Section 257 Cr.P.C., Annexure P/4
to the present petition, which records in his own words that his
father had stepped in and that he did not wish to pursue his fifty
six lakh rupee claim against his aunt any further, in the interest of
peace in the family. That petition was accepted and the Section
138 proceeding against the informant came to an end. The
informant did not reciprocate. As the petitioner-Shantanu Kumar
Singh states at paragraph 12 of the petition, she showed no interest
in ending the litigation against him even after having assured his
father that she would. Having taken the benefit of that withdrawal,
she nonetheless allowed the prosecution against him to continue.
Such conduct is difficult to reconcile with that of an employer
genuinely aggrieved by a breach of trust.

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17. Learned Additional Public Prosecutor as well as
counsel for the informant, when asked across the bar what
independent material, apart from the interested statements of the
informant and her witnesses recorded under Section 161 Cr.P.C.,
exists to show that the petitioner-Shantanu Kumar Singh was ever
entrusted with the cheque books and registers of the school, could
point to nothing beyond the same case diary paragraphs already
relied upon in the impugned order. That position of the State is
placed on record. Entrustment is the first and foundational
ingredient of an offence under Section 406 of the Indian Penal
Code. The Hon'ble Supreme Court in Indian Oil Corporation
versus NEPC India Ltd. , reported in (2006) 6 SCC 736 , held that
where this foundational ingredient is itself in doubt, no offence of
criminal breach of trust can be said to be made out. Here, whether
the petitioner-Shantanu Kumar Singh was ever an employee of the
school entrusted with its cheque books and registers is itself
doubtful, for the reasons already recorded in connection with the
CBSE staff particulars. The very foundation of the prosecution
case thus rests on uncertain ground, and to permit it to continue
upon such a foundation would serve no purpose other than the
harassment of the petitioner-Shantanu Kumar Singh.

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18. There is a further gap in the investigation. Despite
the allegation of hundreds of students having been given receipts
for lesser amounts than what they actually paid, a class of
witnesses that could easily have been examined, not a single
student or guardian was examined during the two years the
investigation is said to have taken. There is no audit report of the
school on the record either, though large scale embezzlement
running into lakhs of rupees, if genuine, would ordinarily leave
behind an audit trail as its most natural and immediate proof. The
absence of both these categories of evidence, the students who are
said to have paid the school and any audit of its accounts, is a
circumstance that tells materially against the prosecution.
19. The Hon'ble Supreme Court in State of Haryana
versus Bhajan Lal, 1992 Supp (1) SCC 335 , laid down at
paragraph 102 of the report the categories in which the power
under Section 482 Cr.P.C. can be used to prevent abuse of the
process of court. Where the allegations in the F.I.R., even taken at
face value and accepted in their entirety, do not prima facie make
out any offence, is one such category. So is a case where the
allegations are so absurd and inherently improbable that no
prudent person could ever reach a just conclusion that there is
sufficient ground to proceed. And so, most of all, is a case where

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the criminal proceeding is manifestly attended with mala fide, or
maliciously instituted with an ulterior motive to wreak vengeance
out of private and personal grudge. The present case answers to
more than one of these categories. The family relationship stands
concealed, and so does the loan of fifty six lakh rupees with its
dishonoured cheque. Nearly four months went by, wholly
unexplained, between the alleged discovery of missing documents
and the lodging of the F.I.R., which then came within three weeks
of a legal notice demanding that very sum. The petitioner Shantanu
Kumar Singh’s name is nowhere in the school's own CBSE staff
particulars for the period he is said to have been employed there,
and not one student witness or audit report was ever produced.
These circumstances, considered cumulatively, point towards a
prosecution set in motion to wreak vengeance and to settle a
private score, and not towards any genuine grievance of criminal
breach of trust.
20. The Hon'ble Supreme Court has held that a
complaint disclosing civil transactions may also carry a criminal
texture, but the High Court must still see whether a dispute that is
essentially civil has been given the cloak of a criminal offence.
Where it has, and a civil remedy has already been resorted to, the
High Court should not hesitate to quash the proceedings. A civil

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remedy, the Section 138 complaint over this very sum of fifty six
lakh rupees, was in fact already resorted to by the petitioner. It is
the informant's own default on that cheque, followed by his legal
notice, that appears to have set off this prosecution.
21. This Court is conscious that the power under Section
482 Cr.P.C. is to be used sparingly, and that at the discharge stage
the court does not hold a mini trial or weigh evidence the way a
trial court would after it is recorded. But that assumes the
prosecution's own materials, taken at their highest, disclose the
ingredients of the offence in the first place. Here the ingredient of
entrustment is doubtful on the prosecution's own documents. The
F.I.R. suppresses the very facts that would explain the informant's
motive. The registration of the F.I.R. follows too closely upon the
dishonour of her own cheque, and upon the notice that came in its
wake, for the two to be treated as unconnected. To allow the
prosecution to continue in these circumstances would not advance
the ends of justice; it would do no more than prolong, in a criminal
forum, a dispute over money between the members of one family.
22. For the reasons recorded above, this application is
allowed. The order dated 01.04.2023 passed by the learned
Additional Sessions Judge XXV, Patna in Cr. Revision No. 27 of
2020, and the order dated 20.12.2019 passed by the learned

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Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate IX, Patna in G.R. No. 963 of
2009, are set aside. Consequently, the entire criminal proceeding
arising out of Gopalpur P.S. Case No. 15 of 2009, G.R. No. 963 of
2009, including charge sheet no. 80 of 2010 and the order of
cognizance dated 19.08.2010, stands quashed so far as the
petitioner is concerned.
23. It is made clear that nothing said in this order is to be
read as an opinion on the merits of any civil claim either side may
still wish to pursue against the other over the said sum of fifty six
lakh rupees. That question is left open, to be settled or litigated
between the parties in the appropriate forum, as they may be
advised.
24. This application stands disposed of accordingly. Any
pending interlocutory application also stands disposed of.
(Ansul, J)
amitkr/-
AFR/NAFR AFR
CAV DATE 08.05.2026
Uploading Date 24.07.2026
Transmission Date 24.07.2026