Hon'ble Judges/Coram:
Dipak Misra and Prafulla C. Pant

JUDGMENT

Dipak Misra, J.

1. The seminal issues that emanate for consideration, unequivocally on the bedrock of fiscal sanctity and decidedly on the plinth of prevalent mindset of borrowers from public financial institutions including banks, are whether a borrower or borrowers after availing finance by creating mortgage on the base of certain documents which, as alleged, are forged, and ingeniously adopt the same modus operandi to avail the benefit from number of banks, who in due course facing the problem set the criminal law in motion by lodging different FIRs and in the ultimate eventuate in an adroit manner enter into settlements and pay the amount and thereafter, knock at the doors of the High Court seeking exercise of inherent jurisdiction Under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Code of Criminal Procedure) or the extraordinary jurisdiction Under Article 226 of the Constitution for quashment of the criminal proceedings; and should the High Court on the foundation that the continuance of the criminal proceedings would be a Sisyphean endeavour after the settlement has taken place to quash the same; and further whether a former Assistant Commissioner of Commercial Taxes can be allowed to advance a plea, obviously a remarkable one, that she had signed the documents either as a guarantor or as a co-applicant, showing deference to her late husband's desire; and, therefore, this Court, in exercise of power Under Article 136 of the Constitution, should not unsettle the common order by which the High Court has quashed criminal proceedings. Additionally, it has also become obligatory to decisively lay down whether continuance of such proceedings would be an unnecessary load on the criminal justice dispensation system and hence, there is neither any warrant nor justification for interference with the order of the High Court. We are invited by the astute proponements to dwell upon the said issues, and we shall do so in due course of our delineation.

2. The factual narrative has a narrow compass. The first Respondent, accused No. 2, along with her husband submitted an application for home loan to the Centurion Bank of Punjab, presently known as HDFC Bank Ltd. for a sum of Rs. 6 lakhs by depositing the sale deed dated 31.10.2001. The HDFC Bank found that documents were forged and accordingly filed a complaint with the Commissioner of Police, Chennai on 20.12.2005 which eventually gave rise to registration of FIR No. 579/06 dated 19.7.2006. Another FIR came to be lodged on 3.8.2006 by Bank of India, Cathedral Branch from which the couple had availed a loan of Rs. 25 lakhs for a Company Development (Medicrops and Medigel) on the grounds that the documents were forged. On 10.7.2006, Vijaya Bank, G.N. Chetty Road Branch filed a complaint that the husband of the accused had applied for a mortgage loan of Rs. 18 lakhs with forged documents by depositing the title deed and the wife stood as a surety. Taking into consideration the complaints lodged by the aforesaid banks, the Inspector of Police, Central Crime Branch, Team-XII, Egmore Chennai, registered the FIRs and commenced the investigation. When the matter stood thus, the Syndicate Ban........