FIR can't be quashed on basis of compromise: HC

Chandigarh, December 10

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The Punjab and Haryana High Court has asserted that an FIR involving non-compoundable sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) could not be quashed on the basis of a compromise, once the charges had been framed, and the framing of the charges accepted by the petitioner-accused.

The Bench also refused to quash, on the basis of a compromise with the complainant, an FIR registered under Section 304-A of the IPC for causing death by negligence.

Justice Harsimran Singh Sethi asserted he had heard the counsel for the parties and gone through the record. It was a conceded fact between the parties that the challan was presented against the accused after investigation in the present case. Even the charges had been framed against the accused under Section 304-A of the IPC. Not only this, the counsel for the petitioner as well as the complainant conceded that the offence under Section 304-A IPC was a non-compoundable.

Justice Sethi also relied upon a High Court judgment stating that intervention in favour of the accused in such cases was indeed a dangerous proposition. Justice Sethi quoted the judgment as saying intervention had a potential to provide an impetus to a proclivity on part of the drivers to continue with their rash and negligent act buoyed by the thought that they would get away with the crime by affording sufficient compensation to the victim’s legal representatives.

Justice Sethi added the counsel for the petitioner had not been able to rebut the proposition of law. “That being so, the prayer of the petitioner in the present petition cannot be accepted in view of the settled principle of law,” said Justice Sethi. — TNS