Delhi High Court refuses to quash FIR against woman accused of taking ₹25 lakh, Audi car from ex

The Delhi High Court recently refused to quash a first information report (FIR) registered against a woman accused of taking ₹25,00,000 and multiple expensive items including watches, eyewear and an Audi car from a man she was in a relationship with..Justice Neena Bansal Krishna observed that the allegations in the present case were not identical to the ones in a previous case filed by the man against the woman.The Court also clarified that an FIR is lodged to verify allegations and doesn't mean that the accused is guilty of the offence.Noting that there was no valid ground to quash the FIR, Justice Bansal said,"In case, the Investigating Officer finds that there are no merits in the allegations or that these allegations have already been examined in the earlier FIR and found to be baseless, there is nothing which prevents him from submitting the Final Report, in terms of his investigation.".The Court was hearing a petition filed by the woman to quash the FIR lodged against her on the basis of a complaint filed by her ex-partner in 2022.The FIR included accusations under Sections 379 (theft), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for cheating), and 471 (using a forged document) of the Indian Penal Code.As per the FIR, the couple met in 2015 while she was working as an Assistant Manager at a bank. Thereafter, the woman presented herself as a divorcee and a single mother with a young child and started a relationship with him under these pretenses. The man claimed that the woman also introduced her husband to him as her brother and another individual, as her father. Eventually, she chose to live with him, and prepared an affidavit of marriage on February 15, 2022 to solemnize their marriage.According to the complaint filed by man, the woman, in collaboration with other co-accused, conspired to steal three luxury watches valued at over ₹13,00,000, five pairs of branded eyeglasses worth ₹1,50,000, and also took his Audi A6.Additionally, woman threatened that she and the co-accused would distribute his blank cheques to others to harass him if he did not meet their demands. .The woman, however, argued that the FIR was a counter-blast to an earlier rape complaint she had filed against the man. Her counsel asserted that the allegations in the current FIR were false, frivolous, and a means to harass her.It was also emphasised that the current FIR covered the same facts as an earlier one, which had already been investigated and resulted in a closure report..At the outset, the Court noted that while some allegations overlapped, the second FIR involved additional accusations, separate dates and distinct transactions.Since the allegations were not identical, the second FIR could not be quashed. The Court thus allowed the investigation to continue and dismissed the petition filed by woman..Advocates Prakash Sinha and Shwetam appeared for the woman.Advocates Rahul Tyagi, Sarthak Chaudhary, Himanshu, Seerat Fatima and Muzaquir Hussain, Naseem Tabrez, Saleem Hussain and Vaibhav Kashyap appeared for the Delhi Police.Advocate Kshitij Mathur represented the complainant man.