Chhattisgarh High Court refuses to cancel sexual harassment case, rejects man’s ‘spite’ claim

The petitioner has approached the high court seeking to set aside the FIR, charge sheet, and criminal proceedings initiated against him for sexual harassment and house trespass under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).

Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Ravindra Kumar Agrawal said the high court’s inherent jurisdiction to set aside criminal proceedings must be exercised sparingly.

Court employee charged for outraging woman’s modesty 

The petitioner is a court employee and the complainant’s husband, a peon who worked at the same court establishment, was alleged to have committed misconduct, following which a departmental inquiry was conducted, and the husband was dismissed from service. 

He claimed that the woman (complainant) and the husband instituted a case against him in vengeance because he had set the departmental proceedings in motion. Whereas, the woman alleged that the petitioner trespassed into her house and outraged her modesty by touching her body and pressing her breast with sexual intent and outraged her modesty on December 29, 2025. The police investigated the complaint, filed a charge sheet, and the trial court took cognisance of the case.

Advocate Sunil Sahu, appearing for the petitioner, argued that he was suffering from 50 per cent permanent locomotor disability and was undergoing treatment, and that the prosecution has completely ignored this relevant circumstance while mechanically proceeding against him. 

The counsel submitted that the investigating officer, without conducting a fair and impartial investigation and without collecting any independent or corroborative evidence, filed the charge sheet merely based on the statements of the woman and her family members. 

It was argued that the allegations against the petitioner were doubtful and had been levelled only with the object of falsely implicating him. He further submitted that the FIR was lodged 17 hours later after the alleged incident without any explanation.

Advocate Sangharsh Pandey opposed the petition, arguing that the FIR and the charge-sheet disclosed the commission of cognisable offences under the BNS. He submitted that the contention of false implication on account of departmental proceedings against the complainant’s husband, the delay in lodging the FIR, and the disability of the petitioner were all matters of defence, which could be examined in proceedings under Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS). 

Plea dismissed 

The court observed that the legal position on the issue of setting aside of criminal proceedings is well-settled that the jurisdiction to cancel a complaint, FIR or a charge sheet should be exercised sparingly and only in exceptional cases and it should not ordinarily interfere with the investigations of cognizable offences. 

The court held that the defence projected by the petitioner regarding false implication, departmental rivalry, delay in lodging the FIR, and absence of independent corroboration can be effectively examined only during the course of trial, after the parties have produced their respective evidence. In the absence of any grounds to exercise its inherent jurisdiction under the BNSS to set aside the criminal proceedings, the court dismissed the petition as devoid of merit.