Allahabad HC Discharges Four Women Accused Added as Afterthought in Sultanpur Theft Case, Upholds Charges Against Named Accused

The Allahabad High Court's Lucknow Bench found that four women were implicated only through later witness statements, with no mention in the original complaint or the eyewitness account of the complainant's father.

The Allahabad High Court's Lucknow Bench has partly allowed a petition under Article 227 of the Constitution of India challenging the rejection of a discharge application in a case under Sections 457 and 380 IPC arising from an alleged house-breaking and theft at Baldirai, District Sultanpur. Justice Subhash Vidyarthi, sitting singly, discharged four women petitioners — Kailashpati, Renu, Sitau Devi and Urmila — on the ground that their names appeared nowhere in the original complaint under Section 156(3) Cr.P.C. or in the statement of the complainant's father, who claimed to be an eyewitness. The court found that both the trial court and the revisional court had acted as a mere mouthpiece of the prosecution without evaluating basic infirmities in the evidence.

The Dispute Before the Court

The case traces back to the night of 26 December 2018. The complainant, Tejbahadur, alleged that while he was away for medical treatment, the locks of his house and shop at Village Lakehatamafi, Police Station Baldirai, Sultanpur were broken open. A generator worth Rs. 80,000/-, three takhats, 50 sacks of paddy, 40 sacks of wheat, two benches, a table, a gas stove, a gas cylinder and other household articles were allegedly removed.

The police did not register an FIR on the complainant's initial report. After he sent a registered post complaint to the Superintendent of Police, Sultanpur, and still received no response, he filed an application under Section 156(3) Cr.P.C. on 24 January 2019 — about a month after the incident. That application named only four persons: Baburam, Sant Ram, Rinku alias Ashwani and Devendra alias Moti. On 15 March 2019, the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Court No. 18, Sultanpur directed the police to register a case. FIR No. 81 of 2019 was accordingly registered under Sections 457 and 380 IPC against those four persons.

During investigation, the Investigating Officer recorded statements from the complainant, his father Raghunath, his son Deepak, and three independent witnesses — Rakesh Yadav, Brijnath and Surendra Kumar. On the basis of those statements, the Investigating Officer submitted a charge-sheet dated 13 June 2019 against nine accused persons, five more than those named in the FIR. The trial court took cognizance on 20 January 2021.

After the charge-sheet was filed, the Investigating Officer arrested Devendra alias Moti (petitioner no. 4) and Jagram alias Sanjay (petitioner no. 7, not named in the FIR) on 4 August 2019 and showed recovery of a generator from their possession. An empty LPG cylinder was shown as recovered from Rajendra, son of Sant Ram. Section 411 IPC was added on the basis of these alleged recoveries.

The petitioners filed a discharge application under Section 227 Cr.P.C. on 11 August 2020. The Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Court No. 20, Sultanpur rejected it on 16 January 2024 in a single sentence, observing that the material collected during investigation disclosed the involvement of all accused persons. The petitioners then filed Criminal Revision No. 43 of 2024 before the Sessions Judge, Sultanpur, which was dismissed on 17 August 2024. Both orders were challenged in the present petition.

The Legal Issue

The central question was whether the trial court and the revisional court had properly applied the standard under Section 227 Cr.P.C. before rejecting the discharge application, particularly in respect of the five accused persons who were not named in the original complaint.

Counsel for the petitioners, Shri Shikhar Anand, argued that the Magistrate had rejected the discharge application mechanically without examining whether a prima facie case was made out against each petitioner individually. He relied on Tuhin Kumar Biswas v. State of West Bengal : 2025 SCC OnLine SC 2604 and Ram Prakash Chadha v. State of Uttar Pradesh : (2024) 10 SCC 651.

Counsel for opposite party no. 2, Shri Dhirendra Kumar Mishra, relied on Manjit Singh Virdi v. Hussain Mohammed Shattaf : (2023) 7 SCC 633 and a coordinate bench decision of this court in Neeraj and two others v. State of U.P. and another : 2025 ASCLKO 45421, which had surveyed the scope and ambit of Section 227 Cr.P.C. at length.

A separate argument was advanced that the pendency of Regular Suit No. 76 of 2006 between the parties — a civil dispute over the same property — should itself be a ground for discharging all the petitioners.

How the Court Reasoned

Justice Vidyarthi set out the governing principles from Sajjan Kumar v. CBI : (2010) 9 SCC 368, as affirmed by a three-judge bench in Ghulam Hassan Beigh v. Mohd. Maqbool Magrey : (2022) 12 SCC 657. The court noted that at the discharge stage, a judge must sift and weigh evidence for the limited purpose of finding whether a prima facie case exists, and must consider the broad probabilities of the case and any basic infirmities — but cannot conduct a roving inquiry as if conducting a trial.

The court drew attention to a passage from Ram Prakash Chadha holding that a court deciding a discharge application has an “irrecusable duty and obligation” to apply its mind to the existence of grounds to proceed, based only on the record and documents before it, and not on mere suppositions or conjectures.

Turning to the facts, the court identified two specific infirmities in the prosecution case against petitioner nos. 5, 6, 8 and 9.

First, the application under Section 156(3) Cr.P.C. was filed approximately one month after the incident and named only four persons. Petitioner nos. 5 to 9 were not mentioned at all. The complainant's father, Raghunath — a retired Sub-Inspector of Police who claimed to have been present at the house and to have witnessed the removal of goods — also did not name petitioner nos. 5 to 9 in his statement to the Investigating Officer. He referred only to “the men of Babu Ram” loading goods onto a tractor and a pickup vehicle.

Second, petitioner nos. 5, 6, 8 and 9 were implicated solely on the basis of statements by three independent witnesses recorded during investigation. Those witnesses stated that Baburam, Rinku, Kailashpati, Renu, Santram, Rajendra, Jagram alias Sanjay, Sitau Devi and Urmila were seen loading goods onto a pickup vehicle. However, even those witnesses did not state that these persons had committed theft by breaking open locks or had forcibly entered the premises, as alleged by Raghunath.

The court observed that it did not appeal to common sense that if the women of the household had been involved in the offence, they would still not have been named in the complaint filed a month after the incident, or in the statement of the complainant's father who claimed to be an eyewitness. Their implication only through subsequent witness statements, without any mention in the Section 156(3) application or in Raghunath's statement, raised a serious suspicion against the correctness of those later statements.

The court held that the trial court and the revisional court had failed to evaluate the total effect of these basic infirmities and had acted merely as a post office or a mouthpiece of the prosecution. Upon sifting and weighing the evidence, the court concluded that even a prima facie case was not made out against petitioner nos. 5, 6, 8 and 9.

The position of petitioner no. 7, Jagram, was treated differently. He was not named in the FIR, but the prosecution claimed that a stolen generator was recovered from his possession. The court held that in view of this alleged recovery, he was not entitled to discharge.

As for petitioner nos. 1 to 4, the court found no ground for discharge. They were specifically named in the Section 156(3) application and specific allegations were levelled against them.

On the civil dispute argument, the court rejected it. Relying on Indian Oil Corporation v. NEPC India Ltd. : (2006) 6 SCC 736, the court held that a commercial transaction or contractual dispute may also involve a criminal offence, and the mere existence of a civil remedy or a pending civil suit is not by itself a ground to discharge accused persons where the allegations disclose commission of a criminal offence. The court found that the allegations in the present case clearly made out offences punishable under criminal law.

The court also noted the observations in Tuhin Kumar Biswas that where a civil dispute is pending between parties, police and criminal courts must be circumspect in filing chargesheets and framing charges respectively, and that the state should not prosecute citizens without a reasonable prospect of conviction. However, this principle was applied only to the question of whether the evidence against the five additional accused persons crossed the threshold of grave suspicion, not as a blanket ground for discharging all nine petitioners.

Outcome

The petition was partly allowed. Justice Subhash Vidyarthi discharged petitioner no. 5 Kailashpati, petitioner no. 6 Renu, petitioner no. 8 Sitau Devi and petitioner no. 9 Urmila from Criminal Case No. 7039 of 2023 arising out of Case Crime No. 81 of 2019, Police Station Baldirai, District Sultanpur.

The prayer for discharge of petitioner nos. 1 to 4 (Baburam, Sant Ram, Rinku alias Ashwani and Devendra alias Moti) and petitioner no. 7 (Jagram) was rejected. Those five accused persons will continue to face trial under Sections 457 and 380 IPC, with Section 411 IPC applicable to petitioner nos. 4 and 7 in connection with the alleged recovery of the generator.