Patna High Court – Orders
Dr. Himanshu Raj vs The State Of Bihar on 23 July, 2026
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA
CRIMINAL MISCELLANEOUS No.41160 of 2023
Arising Out of PS. Case No.-274 Year-2021 Thana- AHIYAPUR District- Muzaffarpur
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Dr. Himanshu Raj Son of Sampat Kumar Resident of Bhagwati Apartment,
Block A 1/C, Brindawan Colony, Road No. 1, AIIMS Road, opposite Walmi
Complex, PS Phulwarisharif, District- Patna, presently residing at MRA M2,
4th Floor, flat no. 411, SGPGI Campus, SGPGI Lucknow 226014
... ... Petitioner/s
Versus
1. The State of Bihar Bihar
2. Dr. Akanksha Wife of Dr. Himanshu Raj Presently residing with her father
Dr. Arun Kumar at Sri Krishna Medical College and Hospital, PS- Ahiyapur
District- Muzaffarpur
... ... Opposite Party/s
======================================================
Appearance :
For the Petitioner/s : Mr.Akshansh Ankit, Advocate
: Ms. Surya Nilambari, Advocate
For the Opposite Party/s : Mr.Ram Naresh Ray, APP
: Mr. Sanjiv Kumar, Advocate
======================================================
CORAM: HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICE ANSUL
ORAL ORDER
11 23-07-2026
Heard learned counsel for the petitioner, learned
Additional Public Prosecutor for the State and learned counsel
appearing on behalf of opposite party no. 2.
2. A counter affidavit has been filed on behalf of
opposite party no. 2, and thereafter a supplementary counter
affidavit, to which certain medical papers are annexed. The
petitioner has placed written notes of argument.
3. The petitioner is the husband of opposite party no.
2. He seeks quashing of the order dated 18.03.2023 passed by
the learned Chief Judicial Magistrate, Muzaffarpur, in the case
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arising out of Ahiyapur P.S. Case No. 274 of 2021, by which
cognizance was taken against him alone for the offences under
Sections 323, 341, 308, 313, 498A, 354, 504 and 506 read with
Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code and Sections 3 and 4 of the
Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, and he seeks quashing of the
entire proceeding arising out of that case. The first information
report itself had been drawn up under Sections 323, 341, 308,
314, 498A, 354, 504 and 506 read with Section 34 of the Indian
Penal Code and the same sections of the Dowry Prohibition Act.
Section 314 stood in the first information report and cognizance
came to be taken under Section 313. Nothing turns on that here
and no more need be said about it.
4. Both parties are doctors. They were married at Patna on
18.06.2017. Opposite party no. 2 joined the petitioner at
Puducherry in June 2018, where he was doing a post graduate
course at the Aarupadai Veedu Medical College and Hospital
and where she also took up work. The marriage did not hold.
The parties have not lived together since June 2020.
5. The written application of opposite party no. 2 dated
13.04.2021, on which the first information report came to be
registered, runs into four typed pages. The occurrence which
forms the core of the prosecution case is said to have taken
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place at Puducherry on 18.06.2020, which was the third
wedding anniversary of the parties. A quarrel arose over the
purchase of an inverter, or so it is stated. The informant says that
the petitioner then assaulted her with a hard substance, assaulted
her on the abdomen and said that he would kill the child in her
womb. She states that she returned to Muzaffarpur, that on
26.06.2020 she had severe abdominal pain and bleeding, and
that in the course of treatment she learnt she had suffered a
miscarriage. Cruelty and demand of dowry at the hands of the
petitioner, his parents, his sister and his maternal uncle and aunt
are also alleged.
6. Final form no. 1131/2022 was submitted on
23.10.2022. It records that the case was found true against the
accused persons, but it was submitted as a mistake of law on the
direction of the Senior Superintendent of Police, Muzaffarpur.
The reason was that the father of the petitioner was at the
relevant time a judicial officer and the first information report
had been lodged against him without the permission of the
Hon’ble the Chief Justice of this Court. A protest petition was
filed. The learned Chief Judicial Magistrate held that the
protection could not be extended to the petitioner, who is not a
judicial officer, and took cognizance against him alone. That is
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the order under challenge. No other accused person is before
this Court, and the course adopted qua the others does not fall
for consideration.
7. Learned counsel for the petitioner submits that the
criminal case is a counterblast to a petition for dissolution of
marriage filed by the petitioner, and that the material collected
during investigation destroys the allegation of miscarriage.
Learned counsel for opposite party no. 2 submits that the
allegations are grave, that the investigating officer found the
case to be true, that the injuries are borne out by the treatment
papers, and that all this is for the trial court and not for a
quashing court.
8. This Court takes up the documentary material first,
because the case can be decided on it.
9. Opposite party no. 2 has herself brought on record, as
Annexure R4 to the supplementary counter affidavit, the
ultrasonography report in her name dated 26.06.2020 issued by
Binod Ultrasound and Colour Doppler, Saraiya Kothi,
Muzaffarpur, on the reference of Dr. Smt. Ashu Rani. The same
report has been reproduced by the investigating officer at
paragraph 54 of the case diary. It is a real time ultra sonography
of the gravid uterus. It records crown rump length of seven
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weeks and zero days. It records that the study reveals a single
live intrauterine foetus, that foetal cardiac activity is seen
normal with heart rate of 148 per minute, and that amniotic fluid
is adequate in amount. An estimated date of delivery is given as
12.02.2021. The impression recorded is single live intrauterine
pregnancy of approximately seven weeks and zero days.
10. The importance of that document does not depend on
any defence being taken by the petitioner. It is the informant’s
own document. She has produced it and she relies on it, and it is
in any event part of the material collected during investigation.
Now take the prosecution case exactly as it is pleaded. The
assault said to have been intended to destroy the child in the
womb took place on 18.06.2020. Eight days later, on
26.06.2020, the foetus was alive. Its cardiac activity was
normal, the amniotic fluid was adequate, and a date of delivery
in February 2021 was being estimated. The report notes no
injury, and nothing untoward of any kind. The allegation that the
petitioner caused the miscarriage by the assault of 18.06.2020 is
contradicted by the informant’s own document.
11. Learned counsel for opposite party no. 2 in fact relies
on the very same report, and paragraph 5 of the supplementary
counter affidavit sets out its contents to prove the pregnancy.
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But the pregnancy is not the issue. The issue is whether the
miscarriage was caused by the assault of 18.06.2020, and on
that the report answers against the informant. The prescription
of Dr. Smt. Ashu Rani of the same date, that is 26.06.2020,
records one and a half months of amenorrhoea with bleeding
since eight days and advises complete bed rest for a threatened
abortion. The dilatation and curettage was done on the next day,
27.06.2020. So on the informant’s own papers the pregnancy
was lost on 27.06.2020, nine days after the occurrence pleaded
in the first information report, and the record of the day before
shows a live and normal foetus.
12. There is a second document and it comes from the
place of the occurrence. The out patient record bearing O.P. No.
20/000076606 issued in the name of the informant by the
Aarupadai Veedu Medical College and Hospital, Puducherry, is
dated 19.06.2020, the day immediately after the alleged assault.
It is Annexure 6 to the quashing petition. She attended the
casualty department. There is no note of pregnancy and no note
of any serious injury. What is recorded is tenderness over the
frontal bone and the occipital region. If the informant had been
assaulted with a hard substance in the manner alleged, and
assaulted on the abdomen with the stated intention of killing the
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child she was carrying, it is difficult to accept that a casualty
record made the next day at the hospital where both parties were
then working would carry none of it.
13. A court under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal
Procedure, 1973 does not weigh evidence and does not test the
defence. This Court is conscious of that. But the two documents
just discussed are not a defence at all. One is the informant’s
own annexure and forms part of the case diary. The other is a
contemporaneous hospital record of the institution where the
occurrence is said to have taken place. Neither has been
questioned by anybody at any stage of this matter.
14. On the material which may be looked at, the position
is settled. In Rajiv Thapar v. Madan Lal Kapoor, (2013) 3 SCC
330, the Supreme Court framed a step wise enquiry for the
exercise of the power under Section 482. The first step is
whether the material relied upon is sound, reasonable and
indubitable, that is to say of sterling and impeccable quality. The
second is whether that material would rule out the assertions
contained in the charges levelled, so as to persuade a reasonable
person to dismiss the factual basis of the accusations as false.
The third is whether the material has not been refuted, or cannot
justifiably be refuted, by the prosecution or the complainant.
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The fourth is whether proceeding with the trial would result in
an abuse of the process of the Court and would not serve the
ends of justice. Where the answer to each is in the affirmative,
the judicial conscience of the High Court should persuade it to
quash. The ultrasonography report of 26.06.2020 satisfies each
of the four. It cannot be refuted by opposite party no. 2 for the
plain reason that it is her own document.
15. The width of the enquiry is also settled. In Mahmood
Ali v. State of Uttar Pradesh, (2023) 15 SCC 488, the Supreme
Court observed at paragraphs 11 to 13 that where quashing is
sought on the ground that the proceedings are frivolous or
vexatious or have been instituted with an ulterior motive for
wreaking vengeance, the Court owes a duty to look into the first
information report with care and a little more closely. The
reason given is a practical one. A complainant who proceeds
with such a motive will ensure that the complaint is very well
drafted with all the necessary pleadings, so that the averments
on their face disclose the ingredients of the offence. It will
therefore not be enough for the Court to look into the averments
alone. The Court owes a duty to look into the other attending
circumstances emerging from the record over and above the
averments and, if need be, with due care and circumspection, to
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read in between the lines, and it is empowered to take into
account the overall circumstances leading to the registration of
the case as well as the materials collected in the course of
investigation. Mahmood Ali arose on facts having nothing to do
with a matrimonial dispute, and it is used for the proposition and
for nothing else. The proposition applies here. The written
application of 13.04.2021 is a long and carefully drafted
document, and the materials collected in the course of
investigation include the very report which contradicts it.
16. On 13.11.2020 the petitioner filed Matrimonial Case
No. 821 of 2020 in the court of the Principal Judge, Family
Court, Patna, under Section 13(1)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage
Act, 1955, seeking dissolution of the marriage on the ground of
cruelty. Notice was issued to opposite party no. 2 by registered
post on 02.02.2021 and was served on her on 05.02.2021. The
track consignment slip bearing number EF347999659IN is on
the record as Annexure 5. The first information report was
lodged on 13.04.2021, a little more than two months after
service of that notice. This sequence was noticed by a
coordinate Bench of this Court in its order dated 03.11.2022 in
Cr. W.J.C. No. 1391 of 2021, which had been filed by the father
of the petitioner.
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17. The written application of 13.04.2021 makes no
mention of the matrimonial case. It is a detailed document
which narrates the history of the marriage from the wedding
onwards, event by event, over four pages. The pendency of a
divorce petition filed by the husband five months earlier, of
which notice had already been served on her, was a fact within
the knowledge of opposite party no. 2 when she made that
application. In her counter affidavit she asserts that she had no
knowledge of the matrimonial case at the time of the institution
of the first information report. That assertion cannot stand
against the track consignment slip, which shows delivery on
05.02.2021, and there is nothing on the record to explain it.
18. There is a further matter. The occurrence of
18.06.2020 at Puducherry, on the third wedding anniversary, and
the quarrel over the inverter, is an occurrence which the
petitioner had himself pleaded in his divorce petition at
paragraphs 29 and 30, filed months before the first information
report. The same occurrence reappears in the written application
of opposite party no. 2 with the roles reversed. Read side by
side, the written application follows the divorce petition.
19. On this aspect the decision in Dara Lakshmi Narayana
v. State of Telangana, (2025) 3 SCC 735, is close on facts. There
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the wife had left the matrimonial home, the husband had issued
a legal notice seeking divorce, and instead of responding to it
the wife lodged a first information report under Section 498A of
the Indian Penal Code and Sections 3 and 4 of the Dowry
Prohibition Act. The Supreme Court held at paragraph 23 that
regard must be had to the timing and the context of the first
information report, and at paragraph 20 that the allegations were
vague and omnibus and mentioned no time, date, place or
manner of the alleged harassment. The case was held to fall
within category 7 of the illustrative parameters in State of
Haryana v. Bhajan Lal, 1992 Supp (1) SCC 335, and the entire
proceedings were quashed. At paragraph 30 the Court noticed
the growing tendency to misuse Section 498A as a tool for
unleashing personal vendetta against the husband and his family.
20. To the same effect is Achin Gupta v. State of Haryana,
(2025) 3 SCC 756. There too the husband had filed a divorce
petition on the ground of cruelty and the first information report
of the wife followed. The allegations were found to be vague,
general and sweeping, specifying no instances of criminal
conduct and no date or time. The Supreme Court held the first
information report to be nothing but a counterblast to the
divorce petition and to the domestic violence case, and quashed
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the proceedings.
21. The categories in Bhajan Lal at paragraph 102 need
no restatement. Category 7 covers a proceeding manifestly
attended with mala fide, or maliciously instituted with an
ulterior motive for wreaking vengeance on the accused and with
a view to spite him due to private and personal grudge. Category
1 covers a case where the allegations, even taken at their face
value and accepted in their entirety, do not prima facie constitute
any offence. On the material discussed above the present case
answers to category 7. So far as the allegation of miscarriage
goes, it answers to category 1 as well.
22. Then there is the delay. Delay in lodging a first
information report is by itself no ground for quashing, and it is
not treated as one here. It has to be seen along with the rest. The
occurrence is of June 2020. The informant returned to
Muzaffarpur on 24.06.2020 to the house of her father, who is
himself a doctor at the Sri Krishna Medical College and
Hospital. Travel in that month required an emergency pass from
the office of the District Collector, Puducherry, and a copy of
the pass issued to her, showing the vehicle and the driver by
name, has been placed on the record. She was treated at
Muzaffarpur between 25.06.2020 and 01.07.2020 by three
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private practitioners. She is herself a doctor. On her own case
she had suffered a miscarriage caused by an assault. No
information was given to the police at Puducherry in June 2020.
None was given to the police at Muzaffarpur when she came
back. Nothing was said at the Aarupadai Veedu Medical College
and Hospital on 19.06.2020, and no medico legal case was
registered by any of the doctors who treated her at Muzaffarpur
either, the prescriptions and the ultrasonography report each
carrying an endorsement that the document is not valid for
medico legal purpose. The police were approached ten months
later, and two months after service of the divorce notice.
23. On the allegation under Section 313 of the Indian
Penal Code there is one further difficulty, and it is mentioned
once. Neither the written application nor the first information
report says anywhere that the informant told the petitioner of the
pregnancy, or that he came to know of it from any source, and
no material has been produced to show when and where the
pregnancy was detected at Puducherry. In Digambar v. State of
Maharashtra, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 3836, the Supreme Court
was dealing with an allegation of forced miscarriage in a
matrimonial setting. It observed at paragraph 27 that there was
not even a whisper in the first information report about the
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complainant conveying the news of the pregnancy to the
accused, and that it was unusual, when allegations under
Sections 312 and 313 of the Indian Penal Code were levelled,
for such an important fact and the knowledge of it to be absent
from the first information report. That observation applies here,
because the case of the informant is that the petitioner assaulted
her saying he would kill the child in her womb, which assumes
knowledge of a pregnancy that her written application nowhere
says was communicated to him.
24. Learned counsel for the petitioner also urged the
absence of a preliminary enquiry, relying on Lalita Kumari v.
Government of Uttar Pradesh, (2014) 2 SCC 1, where
matrimonial and family disputes were placed among the
categories in which a preliminary enquiry may be made. That
decision holds registration of a first information report to be
mandatory where the information discloses a cognizable
offence, and a preliminary enquiry is permissible and not
obligatory. The submission does not carry the petitioner any
further and nothing is rested on it.
25. This Court should record what is not being decided.
Whether opposite party no. 2 was pregnant is not decided. Her
pregnancy on 26.06.2020 is in fact borne out by her own report.
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Whether she suffered a miscarriage on 27.06.2020 is also not
decided, and the genuineness of the medical documents is not
gone into at all. No opinion is expressed on any of it. What is
decided is narrower. On the informant’s own documents the
assault of 18.06.2020 cannot have caused the loss of the
pregnancy, the first information report followed the service of
the divorce notice, and the written application was drawn with
the divorce petition before its author.
26. Taking the allegations at their highest and reading
them with the material collected during investigation, the
prosecution as against this petitioner cannot succeed. Its
continuance would serve no purpose except to keep a man on
trial in a case which his wife’s own document has answered.
This is a fit case for the exercise of the power under Section 482
of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
27. In the result, the order dated 18.03.2023 passed by the
learned Chief Judicial Magistrate, Muzaffarpur, taking
cognizance in the case arising out of Ahiyapur P.S. Case No.
274 of 2021, and the entire criminal proceeding arising out of
Ahiyapur P.S. Case No. 274 of 2021, are quashed so far as they
relate to the petitioner Dr. Himanshu Raj. The observations
made in this order are confined to the disposal of this
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application and shall not be read as an expression of opinion in
any other proceeding between the parties.
28. The application is allowed in the above terms.
Interlocutory application, if any, stands disposed of.
(Ansul, J)
amitkr/-
U T
