Refuting the tenant’s contention that the complaint was lodged after almost 20 years without any reasonable explanation for the delay, the court said there is no time limit for filing an FIR for offences punishable with life imprisonment under Section 468 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

The case arose from a property dispute over a house at Lowther Road, George Town, Prayagraj, owned by the complainant’s mother. The complainant is an IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh Cadre (1991 batch). He allegedly inherited the property after his parents’ death.

Justice Sanjiv Kumar pronounced the judgment on July 3.

The petitioner, Ashok Kumar Pandey, had been living in the house as a tenant since 1995. In 1999, he filed a civil suit seeking a direction to the IAS officer’s mother to execute a sale deed in his favour, claiming that she had orally agreed to sell him the house. To support his claim, he relied on a letter dated September 13, 1999, which purportedly showed that the complainant‘s mother had acknowledged receiving Rs 5.6 lakh as advance sale consideration and sought an additional Rs 3 lakh.

After the woman died in 2012, her son was substituted as a party in the civil suit. In 2019, while inspecting court records, he alleged that the 1999 letter was forged, pointing out that his mother had already denied writing it in a written statement and that the document contained grammatical mistakes inconsistent with her education.

He lodged an FIR accusing the tenant of forging the letter and using it in court to falsely establish an agreement to sell the property, leading to a chargesheet for offences including forgery, cheating and using forged documents. The tenant then approached the high court seeking quashing of the criminal proceedings, contending that the dispute was purely civil and that the FIR had been filed after an unexplained delay of nearly 20 years.

Prima facie, a criminal offence: Order

It was disputed that the tenant filed a letter in 1999, purportedly written by the woman, showing that she accepted Rs 5.60 lakh from him as part payment for the sale of the disputed house in his favour, the court noted.

It observed that the IAS officer’s mother, through a written statement, had denied sending any letter as claimed by the  tenant. After her death, her son was made a party in the civil suit. The court held that the tenant is free to raise the matter before the trial court, which may decide it after examining the evidence.

It dismissed the tenant’s plea to quash the criminal proceedings, holding that the allegations of forging a letter and using it in a civil suit, prima facie, disclosed a criminal offence. It ruled that disputed factual issues must be decided during trial and allowed the prosecution to continue.