Judgment The petitioner, who is the accused in C.S. No. 1062 of 1981 on the file of the Judicial First Class Magistrate, No. 1, Salem seeks the quashing of a case filed against him by the respondent for offences punishable under sections 406, 409, 420 and 468 read with section 471, Indian Penal Code. 2. The petitioner and the respondent are brothers. The dispute relates to the ownership of a concern known as Messrs. Mineral Enterprises, Salem. While the petitioner would say that there was a panchayat and in terms of the decision of the panchayat, he had acquired the exclusive interest of the concern, the respondent would say that he had acquired the exclusive right to the concern. There is a civil suit pending between the parties and the civil Court has granted an order of injunction in favour of the petitioner herein, The petitioner has also filed some cases against the respondent for offences of forgery and making use of forged documents and those cases are pending. In that state of affairs, the respondent filed a complaint against the petitioner for offences of criminal breach of trust etc. The complaint was sent for enquiry by the Magistrate under section 156 (3), Criminal Procedure Code. After enquiry, the police gave a report stating that the petitioner had not committed any offence and the complaint deserved to be referred on the ground of mistake of law. In view of the report of the police, no further action was taken on that complaint. Subsequently, the respondent filed another complaint against the petitioner in respect of the very same offences complained of in the earlier complaint. This complaint was taken on file and process has been issued to; the petitioner. It is at that stage of matters, he has come forward with this petition to quash the proceedings. 3. In the first place, it is argued by Mr. Calvin Jacob, learned Counsel for the petitioner that there is overwhelming evidence to show that it is the petitioner, who had become the sole proprietor, of Messrs. Mineral Enterprises and as such, the claim of the respondent that he is the sole proprietor and that remittances made by third parties in favour of the said company, ought not to have been made use of by the petitioner to make certain payments, is not a tenable one. Mineral Enterprises and as such, the claim of the respondent that he is the sole proprietor and that remittances made by third parties in favour of the said company, ought not to have been made use of by the petitioner to make certain payments, is not a tenable one. The merits of this contention cannot be gone into, because, it is a matter which can be decided only after the respondent-complainant has adduced evidence in the case. Without the respondent being given an opportunity to prove his case and without his evidence and life evidence of his witnesses being taken into consideration, it cannot be said off-hand that his case is totally false one and that the petitioner’s claim to sole proprietorship of the concern merits acceptance. 4. The second contention is that when the first complaint had been duly investigated by the police and found to be unsustainable, and a report was submitted that it should be referred as mistake of law and that report has been accepted by the Magistrate, the Magistrate is not entitled in law to take cognizance of a second complaint with regard to the very same offences. In support of this contention, Mr. Calvin Jacob places reliance on Bhuneshwar Prasad v. Sipte of Bihar1. I am unable to accept this proposition, because it is: well-known that when a Magistrate sends a complaint for enquiry under section 156 (3), Criminal Procedure Code, he does not take cognizance of the case. Consequently, when he receives a police report stating that the complaint should be referred either as false or mistake of fact or mistake of law, he does not pass any judicial order, but merely lodges the complaint and does not take any further action. In such circumstances, there is no bar in law for the Magistrate to entertain a second complaint and take cognizance of it and issue process to the accused. I may only refer to a few reported cases in this connection. In T.K. Subramaniam v. T.K. Gnanasekaran2, Maheswaran, J., has pointed out that the dismissal of a complaint under section 203, Criminal Procedure Code, after receipt of a police report; is not a bar for entertaining a second complaint, because the Magistrate had not taken cognizance of the offence at all when he sent the first complaint for enquiry under section 156 (3), Criminal Procedure Code. 5. 5. M.N. Moorthy, J., also has conceded this position of law in V. Chandrasekara Pandian v. Muthukaruppa Thevar3. 6. The Supreme Court has held in State of Karnataka v. Muniswamy4, that there is a [difference between a Magistrate acting under section 156 (3), Criminal Procedure Code, ‘which falls under Chapter 12 and a Magistrate acting under sections 102, 200 and 204, which fall under Chapter 14 and that a Magistrate is not debarred from taking cognizance of a complaint inspite of the police making an adverse report after enquiry tinder section 156 (3), Criminal Procedure Code. Hence, the legal contention raised by Mr. Calvin Jacob regarding the maintainability of the complaint is not a sustainable one. 7. For the aforesaid reasons, it follows that the complaint filed by the respondent against the petitioner cannot be quashed as prayed for by the petitioner. Consequently, this criminal miscellaneous petition will stand dismissed.