Patna High Court – Orders
Ganesh Kumar @Ganesh vs The State Of Bihar on 23 July, 2026
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA
CRIMINAL MISCELLANEOUS No.56981 of 2023
Arising Out of PS. Case No.-2043 Year-2018 Thana- MUZFFARPUR COMPLAINT CASE
District- Muzaffarpur
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GANESH KUMAR @GANESH SON OF VISHUNDEV MAHATO @
VISHNU DEV MAHTO RESIDENT OF VILLAGE- UDAYPUR, P.S.-
ROSERA, DIST.- SAMASTIPUR
... ... Petitioner/s
Versus
1. The State of Bihar BIHAR
2. GEETA DEVI WIFE OF RANJEET KUMAR RESIDENT OF VILLAGE-
HASANPUR , PS AND PO- HASANPUR, DISTT- SAMASTIPUR
... ... Opposite Party/s
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Appearance :
For the Petitioner/s : Mr.Sanjeev Ranjan, Advocate
For the Opposite Party/s : Mr.Ram Sumiran Rai, APP
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CORAM: HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICE ANSUL
ORAL ORDER
5 23-07-2026
Heard learned counsel for the petitioner and learned
Additional Public Prosecutor for the State. Notice upon opposite
party no. 2 stands served, and there is no appearance on her
behalf.
2. The petitioner has invoked the inherent jurisdiction
of this Court under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal
Procedure, now Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha
Sanhita, for quashing of the order dated 17.12.2018 passed by
the learned Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate II,
Muzaffarpur, in Complaint Case No. 2043 of 2018, whereby
cognizance came to be taken against him under Sections 376,
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363 and 342 read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code and
summons came to be issued. A further prayer has been made for
entrusting an enquiry to the Central Bureau of Investigation into
what is described in the petition as manipulation of the judicial
process.
3. The complaint case, as instituted on 28.07.2018,
proceeds on the following narrative. On 27.06.2018 the
complainant, who is said to carry on a seasonal trade in fruit,
was at Bakri Chowk near Hanuman Mandir within Police
Station Bochaha, District Muzaffarpur, engaged in selling lichi.
The petitioner is alleged to have approached her there and held
out an offer of employment in a factory at Delhi on a salary of
Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 40,000 per month. She is stated to have
travelled with him to Delhi upon that inducement, to have been
confined thereafter in his quarter, to have been given food and
water after taking which she felt dizzy, and to have been
subjected to repeated sexual assault by the petitioner and one co
accused over a period of about twenty seven days under threat,
until she managed to escape and return to Samastipur. It is
further stated that two police stations declined to entertain her
grievance, and that the complaint came to be filed thereafter.
4. The complainant was examined on solemn
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affirmation on 19.09.2018. Three witnesses came to be
examined in the enquiry under Section 202 of the Code, namely
Ranjeet Kumar, described as the husband of the complainant,
Amarjeet Das, and Md. Ayub, stated to be an advocate’s clerk at
the Rosera Civil Court. The order impugned followed on
17.12.2018.
5. Learned counsel for the petitioner submits that the
complaint is a fabrication and that the very existence of the
complainant is in doubt. Three limbs were pressed.
6. The first limb turns upon identity. The complaint
petition describes the father of the complainant’s husband as
Bahadur Yadav. Ranjeet Kumar, who deposed in the enquiry as
the husband, described his own father as Ram Bahadur Yadav.
The submission is that the dropping of the prefix is not a slip of
the pen but a device, and that once the prefix is restored the
husband named in the present complaint and the husband named
in Complaint Case No. 712 of 2018 at Samastipur trace to one
and the same person.
7. The second limb rests upon multiplicity. Two other
complaints have been brought on the record. Complaint Case
No. 614 of 2018 at Saharsa was filed by one Babita Devi, also
described as Babita Kumari, alleging an incident between
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03.05.2018 and 02.06.2018. Complaint Case No. 712 of 2018 at
Samastipur was filed by one Gita Devi, alleging an incident
between 01.04.2018 and 20.05.2018. The photographs of the
complainants in the two files are said to be near identical. The
name of the complainant in the 712 of 2018 matter and in the
present matter is the same, Gita or Geeta Devi, though the
husband is differently described, Baun Yadav in the one and
Ranjeet Kumar in the other. The narrative in all three is an
inducement of employment, a journey to Delhi, confinement
and repeated ravishment. Only the dates and the districts vary.
8. The third limb is motive. The petitioner had himself
instituted Complaint Case No. 497 of 2017 at Rosera against
one Dr. Satish Prasad Singh, alleging negligence in the
administration of anti snake venom resulting in the death of the
petitioner’s mother. That complaint came to be dismissed on
08.08.2018. It is the petitioner’s case that the three complaints
noticed above were set up at the instance of the said doctor by
way of reprisal, through a borrowed or fictitious identity.
9. A further submission was advanced that the
complainant was never subjected to medical examination,
notwithstanding an allegation of repeated forcible intercourse
spread over nearly a month, and that no doctor figures in the list
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of witnesses.
10. Learned counsel placed reliance on State of
Haryana v. Bhajan Lal, 1992 Supp (1) SCC 335, and in
particular on categories 5 and 7 of the illustrative categories set
out therein. He also relied upon Batlanki Keshav Kumar
Anurag v. State of Telangana, 2025 SCC Online SC 1258,
Vineet Kumar v. State of U.P., (2017) 13 SCC 369, and Rajiv
Thapar v. Madan Lal Kapoor, (2013) 3 SCC 330. On the
availability of the jurisdiction at the post cognizance stage he
relied upon Anand Kumar Mohatta v. State (NCT of Delhi),
(2019) 11 SCC 706.
11. Learned Additional Public Prosecutor opposed the
prayer. His submission was that the order impugned came to be
passed only after examination of the complainant on solemn
affirmation and after a full enquiry in which three witnesses
were examined, and that at that stage the learned Magistrate was
required to see nothing beyond a prima facie case. Reliance was
placed on Nagawwa v. Veeranna Shivalingappa Konjalgi,
(1976) 3 SCC 736, and on Amit Kapoor v. Ramesh Chander,
(2012) 9 SCC 460. It was further submitted that a discrepancy
of a single word in the description of a witness’s father’s name is
a matter for cross examination and not for pre trial quashing,
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that resemblance of photographs across separate files is a
disputed question of fact into which this Court does not enter at
the threshold, and that the absence of medical examination is
not by itself fatal, corroboration being a rule of prudence.
Kaptan Singh v. State of U.P., (2021) 9 SCC 35, was pressed for
the caution that the High Court is not to substitute its own view
for a possible view that the trial court may take.
12. The submissions have been considered. The
records have been perused.
13. What distinguishes this matter from the ordinary
run of quashing applications founded upon a plea of false
implication is that this Court is not called upon to accept the
petitioner’s assertion on his own word. The circumstances relied
upon stand recorded in the orders of this Court itself, passed in
connected anticipatory bail proceedings, and they were recorded
over a span of three years.
14. By order dated 04.09.2019 passed in Cr. Misc. No.
34820 of 2019, this Court took note of the very coincidences
now urged and directed the opposite party to appear before the
Registrar General with her Aadhar card. That direction was not
complied with. By order dated 09.09.2019 it came to be
recorded that learned counsel appearing for the opposite party
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had lost instructions and that the Vakalatnama accordingly stood
cancelled. Thereafter, by order dated 31.08.2022, upon a report
that the opposite party did not reside at the address furnished in
the complaint and had still not appeared despite notice, this
Court granted anticipatory bail and observed that there may be a
circumstance that no person by the name of opposite party no. 2
exists at all.
15. The submission of the learned Additional Public
Prosecutor that findings recorded in a proceeding under Section
438 of the Code are tentative in character is unexceptionable as
a general proposition. Bail orders are not expressions of final
opinion on the merits and are not to be treated as such. The
proposition, however, does not carry the State very far in the
facts of this case. The observation dated 31.08.2022 does not
rest upon assertion by the petitioner. It rests upon two
independent materials placed on the record by the machinery of
this Court itself, namely the non compliance with the direction
to appear before the Registrar General, and the service report
showing that the address furnished in the complaint is not the
address at which the complainant resides. A finding sourced
from the Court’s own record does not lose its worth merely
because the proceeding in which it came to be recorded was one
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for pre arrest protection.
16. The complainant has not appeared before this
Court at any stage. Her counsel withdrew for want of
instructions in the year 2019. She was not found at the address
given by her in the complaint. She did not comply with a
direction of this Court to establish her identity by production of
the Aadhar card. Nearly seven years have gone by since the
institution of the complaint.
17. Coming to the three complaints, the similarity
between them is not of the kind that can be dismissed as
coincidence. Three complaints came to be filed within a few
months of each other, at Saharsa, at Samastipur and at
Muzaffarpur, by complainants who between them share a name,
a photograph, and a narrative that varies only in its calendar.
The complainant of the present matter and the complainant of
Complaint Case No. 712 of 2018 bear the same name. The
husband named in the two matters, on the material placed, traces
to the same father once the omission of the prefix Ram is
accounted for. It is precisely this contradiction which persuaded
this Court in the year 2019 to direct an enquiry through the
Registrar General, and that direction remains unanswered to this
day.
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18. Reference may usefully be made to Batlanki
Keshav (Kesava) Kumar Anurag (supra). The Supreme Court
there quashed both the first informations lodged by the
complainant, in a prosecution for rape on a false promise of
marriage read with the provisions of the Scheduled Castes and
the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. The
material weighed by their Lordships included irreconcilable
contradictions between the two reports lodged over the same
subject matter, chats in which the complainant admitted to
manipulative conduct, and, of significance for the present
purpose, a disclosure in the closure report that the complainant
had on an earlier occasion lodged a similar complaint against an
Assistant Professor of the university where she was studying,
levelling identical allegations of cheating and sexual
exploitation on the pretext of a promise of marriage. It was held
that the impugned first information was a bundle of lies full of
fabricated and malicious unsubstantiated allegations, and that
the facts on record established the vindictive and manipulative
tendencies of the complainant, which aspects had a great
bearing on the controversy. The history of similar complaints
was thus treated as a circumstance bearing upon malafide, to be
read with the rest of the material and not by itself. Read in that
manner the decision assists the petitioner here, where the
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repetition is not of one earlier complaint but of two, filed within
months of each other in three districts on a narrative varying
only in its calendar, and where the identity of the complainant
herself has remained unestablished despite the efforts of this
Court.
19. The absence of medical examination, standing by
itself, would not have detained this Court. The law on that
question is settled and is correctly stated by the learned
Additional Public Prosecutor. Corroboration by medical
evidence is a rule of prudence and not an inflexible rule of law,
and the testimony of the prosecutrix, if found trustworthy,
requires no such corroboration. The circumstance is noticed here
not as an independent ground but only as one strand to be read
along with the rest.
20. It is well settled that the inherent power is to be
exercised sparingly and in the rarest of cases, and that the High
Court at this stage does not embark upon a meticulous
appreciation of the evidence or conduct a roving enquiry into
disputed questions of fact. That, however, is not what is being
done. This Court is not weighing the credibility of a
complainant whose evidence awaits recording at the trial. This
Court is confronted with a complainant who cannot be found,
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whose identity was doubted by this Court in the year 2019, who
was directed to establish it and did not, and in respect of whom
this Court recorded in the year 2022 that she may not exist at all.
Where the very existence of the complainant is in doubt, the
question is not one of appreciation of evidence. It is anterior to
the trial altogether.
21. The material also lends some colour to the plea of
motive. The petitioner’s own complaint against Dr. Satish Prasad
Singh came to be dismissed on 08.08.2018. The three
complaints against him were filed in a cluster in the same year.
The proximity is not by itself decisive and this Court records no
finding upon the role of any person not before it. It is one
further circumstance, and it points in the same direction as the
rest.
22. Taking the circumstances cumulatively, and not
one by one, the case falls within categories 5 and 7 of Bhajan
Lal (supra). The allegations are so improbable that no prudent
person can ever reach a just conclusion that there is sufficient
ground for proceeding against the petitioner. The proceeding is
manifestly attended with malafide and has been instituted with
an ulterior motive for wreaking vengeance on the petitioner. To
permit a prosecution of this description to run its course against
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a public servant, upon a complaint whose author has evaded this
Court for seven years, would be to allow the process of the
Court to be continued in abuse.
23. One clarification is necessary. The order under
challenge in this application is confined to Complaint Case No.
2043 of 2018. Complaint Case No. 614 of 2018 at Saharsa and
Complaint Case No. 712 of 2018 at Samastipur are not before
this Court. Those complaints have been noticed in this order
only for the purpose of appreciating the circumstances urged,
and nothing observed herein shall be read as a finding binding
upon those proceedings, which shall be agitated independently
if the parties concerned are so advised.
24. The prayer for entrustment of an enquiry to the
Central Bureau of Investigation stands on an altogether different
footing and does not commend itself to this Court. Nothing on
the present record independently makes out a case for entrusting
any enquiry to an outside agency. That limb of the prayer is
refused.
25. In the result, the application is allowed in part.
The order dated 17.12.2018 passed by the learned Additional
Chief Judicial Magistrate II, Muzaffarpur, in Complaint Case
No. 2043 of 2018, and the entire proceeding arising therefrom,
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are hereby quashed so far as the petitioner is concerned. The
prayer for a Central Bureau of Investigation enquiry is refused.
26. Interlocutory application, if any, stands disposed
of.
(Ansul, J)
amitkr/-
U T
