Tenant who allegedly posed as Amity official loses bid to quash cheating case in Jammu and Kashmir HC
Justice Yash Paul Bourney held that a landlord who spent about Rs 25 lakh refitting a Srinagar commercial block on the strength of a tenant's claimed university credentials and corporate clients had alleged more than a rent default, and that the dispute could not be written off as civil at the threshold.
A tenant who took the top floor of a Srinagar commercial complex in 2017, allegedly after introducing himself as an Assistant General Manager of Amity University, has failed to persuade the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh that the cheating case against him is a civil dispute dressed up as a crime. Justice Yash Paul Bourney, sitting at Srinagar, dismissed Burhan Ahmad Beigh's petition under the court's inherent jurisdiction on 23 October 2026. The allegations, taken at face value, went beyond a default in rent and described false representations made to induce the landlord to part with possession and spend heavily on the building. Whether the tenant had a dishonest intention from the start is for the trial court.
Ninety-six months on the third floor of Hadika Complex
The relationship began with a rent agreement dated 25 August 2017. Beigh was inducted as tenant of about 4,000 square feet on the third and top floor of Block-B, Hadika Complex, Bhagat Barzulla, to be used as office space for 96 months from November 2017. Disputes arose shortly after the tenancy began, with each side offering its own version.
The landlord, respondent No. 5, went to Police Station Sadder. His report alleged that Beigh had approached him for space while projecting himself as an Assistant General Manager at Amity University, Gurgaon, saying he wanted an office to facilitate admissions of students to Amity and other colleges outside the then State of Jammu and Kashmir. Beigh then allegedly said he needed the whole building, about 20,000 square feet, to run business for Big Basket and the Pacific Group of companies, located at Gopal Dass Complex, Connaught Place, New Delhi. The landlord initially offered about 13,000 square feet, which Beigh is said to have accepted, and a draft agreement was prepared and approved for finalisation.
On that footing, the complaint said, the landlord invested about Rs 25 lakh in additions, alterations and modifications to make all five floors ready for occupation and to set up a fully equipped canteen. Beigh took possession of the third floor at a monthly rent of Rs 1.40 lakh. When the final agreement was presented the landlord allegedly found changes and deviations from the approved draft, but signed on Beigh's assurance that the discrepancies would be corrected. Growing suspicious, he approached Amity University and learnt, he says, that Beigh was neither an official of nor associated with it. According to the complaint, Beigh never used the premises but locked them with the intention of wrongfully occupying and grabbing the property.
FIR No. 207/2018 was registered at Police Station Sadder under Sections 419 and 420 of the Ranbir Penal Code. Investigation was completed and a chargesheet laid before the competent court. The record also showed that Beigh had neither appeared before the investigating agency nor surrendered before the trial court, and that the agency had sought action to declare him an absconder.
Four Supreme Court rulings, and why none of them fit
Beigh's counsel, Ateeb Kanth, argued that the dispute was purely civil and had been given a criminal colour to harass and intimidate his client into meeting the landlord's demands. Cheating requires a dishonest or fraudulent intention at the inception of the transaction; a later disagreement or breach of contractual obligations is not enough. He relied on four Supreme Court decisions: Naresh Aneja v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2025 INSC 19), Deepak Kumar Shrivas v. State of Chhattisgarh (2024 INSC 117), Anukul Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2025 INSC 1153) and V. Ganesan v. State (2026 INSC 265).
For the landlord, senior advocate Z.A. Qureshi, with Athar Rashid, said the investigating agency had collected enough material to warrant prosecution and that the petition raised disputed questions of fact which could not be examined in inherent jurisdiction. Beigh could take every permissible defence before the trial court. The petition, he said, had been filed only to delay the trial. Haris Khan appeared for the Union Territory respondents in place of Mohsin S. Qadri, Senior Additional Advocate General.
Justice Bourney began with the test. In a quashing petition the court looks at the allegations in the complaint and the material collected in investigation without a detailed examination of the merits. If the essential ingredients of the offence are not disclosed on a plain reading, interference may be warranted. But where the allegations, taken at face value, prima facie disclose an offence, the proceedings cannot be quashed merely because the dispute may also give rise to a civil remedy.
Reading the complaint and the investigating officer's report together, the judge found three strands of alleged misrepresentation: about Beigh's status as an Amity manager, about the purpose for which the premises were wanted, and about their proposed use for the private companies. Acting on those representations the landlord had let out the third floor and spent about Rs 25 lakh on modifications. Beigh then allegedly failed to take the whole building as represented, defaulted on rent from the very next month for the floor he did take, and kept the premises under his own lock without paying rent or electricity charges. On that reading the allegations could not be treated as a mere subsequent breach of contract divorced from the initial representations. They warranted examination against the ingredients of cheating as defined in Section 419 and punished under Section 420 RPC.
He then took the four precedents in turn. Naresh Aneja arose from a workplace complaint of inappropriate conduct and murder threats that became an FIR under Sections 354 and 506 IPC through a Section 156(3) application, where the Supreme Court found the ingredients missing and also noted that an earlier complaint to the Senior Superintendent of Police had been suppressed. Those facts did not help Beigh, the judge said, because here the allegations of inducement and the consequential acts had to be examined on their own merits. Anukul Singh restated the settled limits on Section 482 power, including that proceedings may be quashed where the allegations disclose no offence or where mala fides make them an abuse of process; but that case concerned a loan transaction and the execution of documents, with surrounding circumstances that showed a malicious prosecution, whereas the present allegations extended beyond non-payment of rent to specific false representations made to induce the landlord to part with possession and spend money. V. Ganesan stated an unexceptionable principle, that criminal proceedings should not continue where no offence is disclosed or the process is being abused, but the specific allegations of inducement here did not bring Beigh within it. The remaining decision was distinguishable on its facts, and the judge repeated that the availability of a civil remedy does not by itself bar a prosecution where the allegations also disclose a crime.
Non-appearance before the police and the trial court
The landlord's side also pointed out that Beigh had never appeared before the investigating agency to explain himself or cooperate, and had not appeared before the trial court either, where the chargesheet was at its initial stage. Justice Bourney said those circumstances could not by themselves decide the quashing prayer, but they furnished no ground for granting it. A court exercising inherent jurisdiction, he added, cannot undertake a detailed appreciation of disputed facts or weigh the evidentiary worth of the investigation material, particularly when the allegations on their face disclose the offence alleged. Beigh remains free to raise every factual and legal plea before the trial court, including in an application for discharge.
Order
The petition, CRM(M) No. 234/2022, was dismissed. No case for interference in the exercise of the court's extraordinary jurisdiction was made out. The judge clarified that his observations were confined to the petition and were not an opinion on the ultimate merits; the trial court is to proceed independently and in accordance with law, uninfluenced by them. A copy of the order was directed to be sent to the trial court for information and compliance. The matter was reserved on 14 October 2026 and pronounced at Srinagar on 23 October 2026.