Gross misuse of criminal law - filing criminal case to settle civil disputes of business.
There two roads in law. It is expected that civil disputes will walk on the Civil Road and Criminal Disputes will walk on criminal Road.
But when business goes bad between two parties, instead of filing a Civil Case, one of them may file criminal case on other party to bring pressure on him,
So what can be done?
First, nature of dispute is required to be examined.
The disputes may fall in following categories:
1) Purely Civil Dispute.
2) Some part of dispute may be criminal, but by and large, dispute has overtone of civil nature. (Ref: 2002 SC Case regarding Dental Chair sale - Justice Rajendra Babu)
3) Dispute is partly civil and partly criminal.
4) Dispute is Civil and/ as well as Criminal, both.
5) Dispute is purely criminal.
There are very fine distinctions in above categories.
Facts have to be fully analysed.
Most probably, there will be lots of documents filed with the complaint. Some correspondence between parties will be there, some account entries may be there.
The all and each documents are crucial in deciding nature of disputes.
Then, if dispute falls in category No. 1 and 2, there are chances that Higher Court may quash the criminal case. In criminal law nothing is certain. But once case is properly analysed and presented properly to Higher Court, it is for judges to decide nature of dispute.
Haresh Raichura
