Calls multiple proceedings on same facts ‘fraud on court’, ‘gross abuse of process of law’
RK News Service
Srinagar, May 15: The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh on Thursday, (May 14, 2026), quashed an FIR registered at Police Station Budgam against Delhi-based Vishvendra Singh, holding that the institution of multiple criminal proceedings on the same set of facts across Srinagar, Budgam, and New Delhi amounted to a gross abuse of the process of law and a fraud on the court.
The order was passed by Justice M.A. Chowdhary at the Srinagar wing of the High Court in CRM(M) No. 162/2022. By the impugned order dated November 1, 2021, the Special Mobile Magistrate, Budgam had directed registration of FIR No. 327/2021 under Sections 469 and 505(II) IPC on a complaint by M/s WTC Faridabad Infrastructure, a company of the WTC group promoted by builder Ashish Bhalla.
Appearing for the petitioner, Advocates Vikas Malik and Mushtaq Ahmad Dar argued that the respondent company had resorted to “forum shopping of the most egregious kind” by instituting three parallel proceedings against the petitioner at Srinagar, Budgam, and Saket Court, New Delhi—all arising out of a singular alleged Twitter trend captioned “Anti India WTC TALIBAN ACT” of September 12, 2021.
They submitted that the allegations in the Budgam FIR were a verbatim copy of the earlier Srinagar complaint, that the respondent had suppressed the prior proceedings from each forum, and that recasting the same facts under different IPC sections was a transparent attempt to bypass the bar against multiple trials. Reliance was placed on Article 20(2) and Article 21 of the Constitution, the “Test of Sameness,” and Supreme Court rulings barring a second FIR on the same occurrence.
Coming down heavily on the complainant, Justice Chowdhary observed that the respondent had obtained a summoning order from the CJM, Srinagar on October 7, 2021, and days later approached the Budgam Magistrate on the exact same facts without disclosing the prior proceedings.
“Such conduct amounts to a fraud on the court and a gross abuse of the judicial process,” the court held, adding that the respondent was “using the law not as a shield for justice, but as a sword for harassment.”
Splitting a single cause of action into multiple criminal cases by merely changing the nomenclature of the offences, the Court said, was legally impermissible and would create “a dangerous precedent for judicial anarchy”.
Noting that the criminal justice system “cannot be allowed to be utilized as a tool for corporate vendetta or to settle personal scores through the systematic exhaustion of a citizen’s resources and liberty”, the High Court allowed the petition, set aside the order dated November 1, 2021, of the Special Mobile Magistrate, Budgam, and quashed FIR No. 327/2021 of Police Station Budgam along with all consequential proceedings.