Mumbai: In a relief for former Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court has dismissed a petition seeking investigation against Fadnavis and his associates in a case of theft of court pleadings from the office of the government pleader in an unauthorised manner.
While dismissing the petition, a division bench of Justices VM Deshpande and Amit Borkar, observed, “On consideration of overall facts and circumstances of the present case, we are of the considered view that the information in the complaint filed by the petitioner does not disclose any cognizable offence nor there is necessity of conducting any inquiry to ascertain whether the cognizable offence is disclosed or not”.
The HC was hearing a petition filed by advocate Satish Uke stating that he had filed a complaint against Fadnavis and his associates on the ground that they had obtained photo copies of a criminal writ petition from the office of the public prosecutor at Nagpur Bench of HC.
According to Uke, he had filed a writ petition in the HC and had sent its copies to the office of the government pleader. Uke further alleged that Fadnavis, through his “secret agent” learnt about his petition and thereafter illegally acquired a copy by committing theft.
Uke alleged that those copies were utilised for filing an intervention application by the associates.
Uke then filed a complaint with the police station on July 5. However, he has alleged that the police did not act on his complaint due to Fadnavis’ political influence as he is former CM and presently Leader of Opposition of the Maharashtra State Legislative Assembly.
Hence, Uke filed the current petition in the HC seeking action against Fadnavis and his associates.
Dismissing his petition, the HC observed that the complaint failed to disclose if there was any wrongful gain by the intervention applicant Fadnavis’ associate) or if there had been a wrongful loss to Uke or to the Government Pleader's officer which would be necessary to show the offence of theft.
Besides, Uke’s complaint itself states that the documents thus obtained were used by Fadnavis’ associate to file an intervention application in the HC only to vindicate his stand in the writ petition.
“Merely because the intervention applicant has used the copies of the documents in the judicial proceedings, it cannot be said that the intervention applicant has removed the documents with “dishonest” intention,” observed the judges.
HC dismissed Uke’s petition observing that there was need to conduct any inquiry.
