IN THE HIGH COURT AT CALCUTTA CRIMINAL REVISIONAL JURISDICTION APPELLATE SIDE PRESENT: THE HON’BLE JUSTICE UDAY KUMAR CRR 1464 OF 2023 SUBHABRATA PAL -VS- STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND ANR. For the Petitioner : Mr. Ananda Gopal Mukherjee, Ld. Adv. For the State : Mr. Madhusudan Sur, Ld. APP Mr. Dipankar Paramanick, Ld. Adv. Hearing concluded on : 22.04.2026 Judgment on : 16.06.2026 UDAY KUMAR, J.: – 1. This is an application under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, preferred by the petitioner, Subhabrata Pal, praying for the quashing of the criminal proceedings in connection with G.R. Case No. 1310 of 2022, currently pending before the Learned Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Ghatal, Paschim Medinipur. The said proceedings arise out of the registration of Daspur Police Station Case No. 532 of 2022 dated 03.11.2022, under Sections 420, 406, 409 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, against the present petitioner, the son of a deceased licensee, and 2 CRR 1464 OF 2023 one Hemanta Santra, a contractual Data Entry Operator at Daspur – II BDO Office. 2. To appreciate the challenge thrown by the petitioner to the very inception of this prosecution, it is essential to lay bare the foundational matrix of the case. The record reveals that the criminal machinery was set in motion by a formal written complaint lodged by the Sub-Divisional Controller of Food and Supplies, Ghatal, acting on behalf of the state administration. The genesis of the prosecution’s case is rooted in a specialized administrative audit conducted by an official enquiry team of the Food and Supplies Department, Government of West Bengal, between September 5, 2022, and September 13, 2022. This audit officially exposed a deep-rooted, systemic fraud executed via the digital manipulation of data hosted on the State’s Ration Card Life Cycle Management (RCLCM) portal within the Daspur-II Block. 3. A close scrutiny of the investigative materials reveals a highly disturbing modus operandi involving a severe compromise of internal cyber security. Secure administrative login credentials and passwords, which were exclusively assigned to the department’s Area Inspectors for regulatory oversight, had been illicitly accessed and exposed to unauthorized external actors. It is the specific case of the prosecution that this internal security breach was engineered by the co-accused, Hemanta Santra, a contractual Data Entry Operator engaged within the department. Operating from within the administration, Mr. Santra allegedly misappropriated 3 CRR 1464 OF 2023 these confidential passwords and subsequently leaked them to the present petitioner, Subhabrata Pal, in exchange for an illicit financial bribe of ₹2 Lakhs. 4. Armed with this unauthorized administrative access, a systematic operation was launched to surreptitiously generate an abnormal number of spurious Digital Ration Cards (DRCs). This illicit enterprise was executed primarily through the fraudulent processing of "Form-IV" applications on the state portal. Through these applications, fictitious family members, predominantly children under the age of five or individuals bearing completely mismatched surnames, were artificially injected into the digital profiles of genuine, pre-existing consumer units. 5. Crucially, the digital audit trail compiled by the State’s technical team explicitly linked the petitioner to this illicit database activity, demonstrating that Subhabrata Pal’s personal mobile number and unique Aadhaar card identifiers had been repeatedly utilized as the primary validation mechanisms to execute and activate these fraudulent portal entries. 6. The ultimate objective of this digital forgery and database manipulation, as maintained by the prosecution, was to induce the automated allocation system into generating fake ration cards. These spurious credentials were then used to facilitate the illegal, large-scale lifting and diversion of highly subsidized Public Distribution System (PDS) food grains directly into the open market, causing a direct, fraudulent drain on the public exchequer 4 CRR 1464 OF 2023 and depriving legitimate beneficiaries of their essential food security. 7. Aggrieved by the institution of this prosecution, the petitioner has moved this revisional application seeking the quashing of the proceedings. 8. Mr. Anand Gopal Mukherjee, learned Counsel appearing on behalf of the petitioner, has forcefully argued that the First Information Report, even if accepted in its absolute entirety without a single syllable of detraction, completely fails to disclose the essential ingredients of the offenses alleged. 9. He underscored that the charge under Section 409 of the Indian Penal Code is an absolute legal impossibility in the facts of the present case. It was contended by him that Section 409 IPC is a strictly status-specific offense requiring the accused to be a public servant, banker, merchant, factor, broker, attorney, or agent, who has been specifically entrusted with property or given dominion over it in that precise professional capacity. 10. Adverting to the undisputed records, Mr. Mukherjee had pointed out that the statutory Fair Price Shop dealership license was originally held by the petitioner’s late father, Madan Mohan Pal, and upon his demise, was granted to his late mother, Sikha Pal. The petitioner, being a private citizen and a cultivator, was a complete legal stranger to this statutory contract of agency. 11. To build further upon this legal proposition, the learned Counsel had submitted that "entrustment" cannot occur in a legal vacuum; 5 CRR 1464 OF 2023 it requires a voluntary, lawful transfer of property from the owner to the trustee. Since the petitioner held no de jure status or license, the State had never entrusted him with any public commodities, and therefore, bringing a private individual within the severe grip of Section 409 IPC through a judicial assumption of de facto control is legally impermissible. 12. By extension, it had been argued that the charge of simple criminal breach of trust under Section 406 IPC and Cheating under Section 420 IPC must also fail, as the petitioner, who suffers from a documented 60% physical disability and is a simple cultivator, possessed neither the technical literacy nor the administrative authority to make any deceptive representations to an automated system. 13. Placing heavy reliance on Categories 1 and 7 of the landmark authority of State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal [1992 Supp (1) SCC 335], Mr. Mukherjee had vehemently contended that the proceedings are manifestly malicious, highlighting what he terms a striking chronological proximity between the demise of the petitioner’s mother on October 17, 2022, and the lodging of the FIR on November 3, 2022. 14. It had been argued that the local authorities, seeking to cover up their own institutional vulnerabilities exposed during the September 2022 audit, have maliciously set the criminal law in motion against a grieving, disabled family member who had no hand in the day-to-day administration of the shop. On these 6 CRR 1464 OF 2023 grounds, the petitioner prayed for the total quashing of the FIR and a stay on all coercive investigatory steps. 15. Per contra, Mr. Madhusudan Sur, the learned Additional Public Prosecutor appearing for the State and the de facto complainant, had forcefully countered these submissions. He argued that the inherent power under Section 482 Cr.P.C. must not be exercised to stifle a legitimate investigation at its inception, particularly when the matter involves a grave socio-economic offense targeting public food infrastructure. Mr. Sur directly countered the petitioner's argument regarding his lack of a formal license by submitting that the absence of a de jure status as a licensee does not insulate an interloper from criminal liability under Sections 406, 409, and 420 of the IPC. 16. The prosecution's case, as explained by the learned A.P.P., is not that the petitioner functioned as a lawful dealer, but that he acted as an intruder who actively usurped the administration of the Fair Price Shop. By allegedly paying a bribe of ₹2 Lakhs to a contractual Data Entry Operator, Hemanta Santra, to obtain secure administrative passwords, the petitioner assumed de facto dominion over the public commodities. 17. Mr. Sur invoked the settled proposition of law that an individual who takes unauthorized control of public property under the guise of an agency can be treated as a trustee de son tort, and therefore, the actual physical and electronic control the petitioner exercised 7 CRR 1464 OF 2023 over the PDS supply fully satisfies the statutory requirement of "dominion" under Section 409 IPC. 18. Learned Counsel had further submitted that the FIR was not born out of thin air or personal animosity, but was backed by a precise, unassailable digital audit trail. He has drawn the attention of this Court to the specialized departmental audit which explicitly traced the petitioner's personal Aadhaar card and mobile number to the digital activation of thousands of spurious Digital Ration Cards. It was argued that by using his unique identifiers to validate fraudulent applications, the petitioner made a direct, dishonest representation to the State’s automated database, squarely satisfying the statutory definitions of Cheating under Section 420 IPC. 19. Finally, Mr. Sur argued that the petitioner's contention of lack of a formal license is completely irrelevant to a charge of conspiracy; in fact, the petitioner functioned as the external mastermind utilizing an internal departmental conduit to bypass state firewalls, and his reliance on Bhajan Lal is entirely misplaced and distorted. The offense being a grave public wrong affecting the food security of marginalized populations, the allegations are neither absurd nor inherently improbable. Because the investigation is at a primitive stage and crucial evidence is still being collected, a summary "mini-trial" under Section 482 Cr.P.C. is legally impermissible. 20. Therefore, he prayed for the dismissal of the revisional application and the immediate vacation of any interim protection. 8 CRR 1464 OF 2023 21. I have given my anxious consideration to the submissions advanced by the learned Counsel for the respective parties, and have comprehensively reviewed the material on record. This Court is now called upon to determine whether the inherent, extraordinary jurisdiction under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure should be exercised to quash this proceeding at its embryonic stage. 22. It is a foundational and deeply entrenched principle of criminal jurisprudence that the power to quash an investigation must be used with extreme circumspection, administrative detachment, and only in the rarest of rare cases. It must be emphasized that a Revisional Court cannot step into the shoes of a Trial Court. It cannot conduct a premature appreciation of evidence, weigh the sufficiency of preliminary materials, or hold a summary "mini-trial" to microfilm the guilt or innocence of an accused. The threshold look-through of this Court is strictly confined to verifying whether the raw, uncontroverted allegations in the complaint, taken at their absolute face value, prima facie disclose the essential ingredients of a cognizable offense. 23. In addressing the petitioner’s primary argument, which relies heavily on the guidelines enumerated in State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal, specifically Category 7 regarding malicious prosecution, I find that the facts of the present case are completely distinguishable from the matrix of the Bhajan Lal controversy. The initiation of the criminal enforcement machinery here was not triggered by personal 9 CRR 1464 OF 2023 animosity, vendetta, or a private grudge. Rather, it was the direct, lawful outcome of an objective, specialized digital audit conducted by an official administrative enquiry team between September 5, 2022, and September 13, 2022. 24. Crucially, this audit was fully concluded during the lifetime of the petitioner's mother, a fact which completely falsifies the petitioner's argument that the case was a malicious afterthought hatched after her demise on October 17, 2022. The protective umbrella of Category 7 of Bhajan Lal cannot be stretched to shield a case built on an independent, data-driven administrative probe. 25. Furthermore, the petitioner has invited this Court to evaluate his personal defences specifically his 60% physical disability, his occupation as a cultivator, and his technical incapacity to manipulate a secure government database. However, this Court prima facie, finds that such an invitation is directly blocked by the binding ratio of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in State of Madhya Pradesh v. S.B. Johari & Ors. [(2000) 2 SCC 57], where it was explicitly held that at the stage of framing charge, the Court is not required to appreciate the evidence to arrive at a conclusion regarding eventual conviction. If a Court is barred from weighing evidence at the stage of framing charges, it is completely impermissible to do so at the primitive stage of an ongoing investigation when the police are still gathering materials. The electronic audit logs present an objective digital trail linking the petitioner's unique personal identifiers to the unauthorized 10 CRR 1464 OF 2023 validation of the fraudulent portal entries. Whether the petitioner lacked the technical capacity to execute this fraud, or whether he acted as an external mastermind utilizing an internal conduit, are pure questions of fact that must be subjected to the fire of cross- examination during a full trial. When dealing with the systemic manipulation of welfare portals, the governing precedent is the decision in Neeharika Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd. v. State of Maharashtra & Ors. [2021 SCC OnLine SC 315], where the Hon’ble Supreme Court issued a strong directive against halting the statutory investigative machinery of the State when a prima facie case is disclosed. 26. Turning to the core legal contestations regarding the penal sections, the petitioner has argued that Section 409 of the IPC cannot apply to a private individual who is a legal stranger to the departmental agency. To analyze this, this court must examine Section 405 of the IPC, which defines Criminal Breach of Trust. The provision requires two essential ingredients: (a) entrustment of property or dominion over property, and (b) dishonest misappropriation or conversion of it for one's own use. Section 409 escalates the penalty when this offense is committed by a public servant, banker, merchant, or agent. 27. Regarding the charge under Section 409, 406 IPC, the petitioner contends that as he is a private citizen and not a public servant, the section is inapplicable. However, the law on "entrustment" and "dominion" is well-settled. The "dominion" over property is a 11 CRR 1464 OF 2023 concept wider than physical possession or formal legal title. The expression "in the way of his business as an agent" under Section 409 IPC must be interpreted in light of the actual control exercised over public property. The State has raised a profound legal proposition by characterizing the petitioner as a trustee de son tort, a person who, without authority, intermeddles with the administration of trust property and assumes the management thereof. The Hon'ble Supreme Court in Superintendent and Remembrancer of Legal Affairs, West Bengal v. S.K. Roy [(1974) 4 SCC 230] held that even if there is a defect in the formal appointment of an agent, or if a person acts without explicit de jure authority but exercises de facto control over property under the colour of an office or agency, such an individual cannot escape liability for criminal breach of trust by pleading a lack of formal status. He is estopped from denying the trust relationship that his own conduct created. 28. In the present matrix, the petitioner allegedly circumvented state firewalls, compromised official administrative passwords by paying a bribe, and took de facto electronic control over the PDS allocation data. By weaponizing these credentials, he asserted a criminal dominion over public commodities. Once the petitioner allegedly assumed control of the ration distribution portal, he assumed a duty to handle that public resource with the integrity required by law.Therefore, the defence that he is a "legal stranger" is a double- edged sword; while he may not be a de jure agent, his unauthorized 12 CRR 1464 OF 2023 intermeddling squarely invites the application of the doctrine of trustee de son tort. 29. Similarly, regarding the charge of Cheating under Section 420 IPC, the essential ingredients are deception and dishonest inducement to deliver property. The petitioner argues that he could not make a "representation" to an automated computer system. This argument fails to keep pace with modern technological jurisprudence. A computer system or an automated database portal like the RCLCM behaves exactly as programmed by its human master. When an individual inputs fraudulent parameter, stolen validation tokens, or compromised administrative passwords into a portal, they are making a deceptive representation directly to the digital apparatus of the State. The system is induced by this electronic deception to generate ration cards and release highly subsidized food grains. Thus, cyber-manipulation of an automated database to extract property fully satisfies the statutory framework of Section 415 and Section 420 of the IPC. 30. Turning to the socio-economic gravity of the matter, a clear distinction must be drawn when evaluating offenses that directly target the public exchequer and state public policy. The Public Distribution System is a vital welfare mechanism designed to secure the food security of marginalized sections of society. Any fraudulent drain on these resources carries a profound gravity that lifts the case entirely out of the realm of ordinary private disputes. As observed by the Supreme Court in State of Gujarat v. Mohanlal 13 CRR 1464 OF 2023 Jitamalji Porwal & Anr. [(1987) 2 SCC 364], the court must view socio-economic offenses with a realistic approach, as a fraud on the public exchequer inflicts a grave injury on the society as a whole. 31. The petitioner’s personal circumstances, including his physical disability and occupational background, are matters of defence that must be weighed by the Trial Court upon the appreciation of evidence during a full-fledged trial. At this stage, the digital audit trail, which allegedly links the petitioner’s unique Aadhaar identifiers to the manipulation of the database, provides the necessary prima facie foundation for the prosecution to proceed. To quash these proceedings would be to grant premature immunity in a matter concerning the systemic exploitation of the Public Distribution System, which is a vital component of the State's welfare mandate. 32. On a comprehensive conspectus of the facts and the settled legal principles discussed hereinabove, this Court arrives at the following conclusions: I. First, the criminal proceedings were not born out of legal malice or a private vendetta, but are the direct, logical consequence of an objective, data-driven administrative audit that exposed a major institutional fraud. The guidelines in Bhajan Lal for quashing on the grounds of malice are completely inapplicable. 14 CRR 1464 OF 2023 II. Second, the lack of a de jure license does not grant immunity to the petitioner. His alleged conduct in assuming de facto electronic control over public food distribution data brings him within the threshold of "dominion" under the doctrine of trustee de son tort, making the applicability of Sections 406 and 409 IPC a triable issue. III. Third, the digital trail compiled by the technical team, linking the petitioner’s unique Aadhaar and mobile credentials to the fraudulent activation of fake cards, discloses a clear prima facie case of digital deception under Section 420 IPC. IV. Fourth, because the investigation is at a stage where evidence is actively processed, the charge-sheet having been submitted on 30.06.2025, it is entirely premature for a Revisional Court to truncate the statutory powers of the Trial Court. The Trial Court is the sole and appropriate forum to evaluate the sufficiency of the evidence and decide upon the final charges. 33. In view of the aforesaid discussions, I find no merit in the contention that the proceedings disclose no offense. The allegations are grave, specific, and supported by a digital nexus that necessitates a thorough investigation and subsequent trial. 34. Consequently, the question for determination is answered in the negative. To choke this prosecution would freeze a 15 CRR 1464 OF 2023 legitimate inquiry into a grave socio-economic scam, amounting to a total miscarriage of justice. The prayer for quashing the proceedings cannot be acceded to. 35. Accordingly, the instant Revisional Application, being C.R.R. No. 1464 of 2023, stands dismissed. 36. The prayer for quashing the First Information Report registered as Daspur Police Station Case No. 532 of 2022 dated 03.11.2022 and the consequential proceedings in G.R. Case No. 1310 of 2022, is hereby rejected. 37. All ad-interim orders are hereby recalled and vacated with immediate effect. 38. The Learned Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Ghatal, Paschim Medinipur, is directed to take immediate steps to ensure an early, time-bound trial. 39. The Trial Court shall expedite the proceedings and dispose of the entire case on its merits without granting unnecessary or routine adjournments to either party. 40. It is explicitly made clear that any observations touching upon the factual matrix of this case made by this Court are strictly confined to the determination of this revisional application under Section 482 Cr.P.C. The learned Trial Court shall proceed with the trial completely uninfluenced by any such observations and shall decide the guilt or innocence of the accused independently on the basis of the evidence adduced before it during the trial. 16 CRR 1464 OF 2023 41. The registry is directed to communicate this order immediately to the learned Trial Court and the concerned police authorities for strict and prompt compliance. 42. The criminal revision is accordingly disposed of. 43. All connected applications stand disposed of. 44. Interim orders stand vacated. 45. There shall be no order as to costs. 46. The Trial Court Record (TCR), if any, shall be sent down to the Trial Court, at once. 47. Case diary, if any, be returned forthwith. 48. Urgent photostat certified copy of this judgment, if applied for, be supplied to the parties upon compliance with all requisite formalities. (Uday Kumar, J.)