Worker’s Leg Amputated After Crane Accident, Yet Jharkhand HC Quashes Contractor’s Cheating Case Over Stopped Aid, Finding No Deception At Inception

The complainant worked as a crane operator under the petitioner, a contractor engaged by M/s Tata Steel Processing & Distribution Ltd.

In an accident at work, a crane hook fell on the complainant’s foot, ultimately resulting in amputation of his left leg.

The complainant alleged that the petitioner initially undertook to meet his treatment expenses but stopped providing financial assistance after about three months.

After police submitted a final report, the complainant pursued a protest-cum-complaint case; the Magistrate found a prima facie case under Sections 418/34 IPC and issued process against the petitioner.

The Magistrate later rejected the petitioner’s discharge application, and the Sessions Court dismissed his revision.

The petitioner sought quashing under Section 528 BNSS.

Section 418 IPC applies where a person cheats another while being legally or contractually bound to protect that person’s interests, knowing that the cheating is likely to cause wrongful loss to that person.

The offence of cheating requires deception and fraudulent or dishonest inducement, causing or likely to cause harm; in cases involving a promise or contractual obligation, dishonest intention must exist at the inception, and mere subsequent failure to perform does not, without more, constitute cheating.

The Court relied on Medchl Chemicals and Pharma (P) Ltd. v. Biological E. Ltd., (2000) 3 SCC 269; Harmanpreet Singh Ahluwalia v. State of Punjab, (2009) 7 SCC 712; Suryalakshmi Cotton Mills Ltd. v. Rajvir Industries Ltd., (2008) 13 SCC 678; and Uma Shankar Gopalika v. State of Bihar, (2005) 10 SCC 336.

The alleged misconduct was that the petitioner stopped paying the complainant’s medical expenses after initially supporting his treatment.

The Court found no allegation that, when the petitioner undertook to provide assistance, he intended to deceive the complainant or had made a dishonest or fraudulent representation.

Even assuming that the petitioner later stopped meeting the expenses, that subsequent conduct did not establish deception at the inception or otherwise satisfy the ingredients of Section 418 IPC.

The offence was therefore not made out, including with the aid of Section 34 IPC.

It quashed, qua the petitioner, the criminal proceeding in C/1 Case No. 1039 of 2015 and the Magistrate’s orders dated 7 June 2017 and 6 August 2025, as well as the revisional order dated 8 July 2026.

The petition was allowed.