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Madhya Pradesh High Court · body

2016 DIGILAW 145 (MP)

Bhawar Singh v. State of M. P.

2016-02-22

ALOK VERMA

body2016
ORDER 1. This application under section 482 CrPC is filed for quashment of proceedings initiated by respondent/State and pending in the Court of Judicial Magistrate First Class, Indore as Crime No.36599/2013. 2. Brief facts giving rise to this application are that the present applicant is a construction contractor, who was engaged by M/s. Sunny Developers to carry out construction activity at site of Kingdom Heights Building, Indore. An accident took place at the site on 27.2.2013 in which worker Sanjay Yadav suffered electrocution and died. The inspection was done by the inspector under the provision of The Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996 (hereinafter called ‘the Act’) and found that the present applicant failed to provide constant and adequate supervision at the site and also he failed to ensure compliance with the provisions of the Act relating to safety and for taking necessary steps for prevention of accident. The Inspector filed a complaint under section 47 of the Act before the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Indore. The learned Chief Judicial Magistrate in Criminal Case No.27282/2013 vide its order dated 30.11.2013 convicted the present applicant and imposed fine of Rs.8,000/- (on four counts). The present applicant paid the fine. The receipt is Annexure P-3. 3. Subsequent to this, in respect of the same incident, a crime was registered by Police Station- Chandar Nagar, Indore as Crime No.1159/2013 under section 304A of IPC and after investigation, a charge-sheet was filed which was registered as Criminal Case No.36599/2013. 4. Legal representative of the deceased Sanjay Yadav also filed a case under Employment Compensation Act before the competent court and the court awarded compensation of Rs.5,09,355/-. The said amount is also paid by the present applicant. 5. This application is filed on the ground that under section 300 CrPC, prosecution of a person in an offence based on the same set of facts is prohibited, and therefore, once petitioner is convicted under section 47 of the Act, the proceedings under section 304A of IPC cannot continue. 6. 5. This application is filed on the ground that under section 300 CrPC, prosecution of a person in an offence based on the same set of facts is prohibited, and therefore, once petitioner is convicted under section 47 of the Act, the proceedings under section 304A of IPC cannot continue. 6. Learned counsel for the applicant placed reliance on order of this Court dated 30.9.2015 passed in Miscellaneous Criminal Case No.3222/2015 Neeraj Verma v. State of M.P. In this case, reliance was placed by various judgments passed by the High Courts of Jharkhand, Madras and Chhattisgarh and it was observed that under section 92 of Factories Act, where the punishment prescribed is same so far as the jail sentence is concerned, as prescribed under section 304A of IPC. However, amount of fine is Rs.1 lac. Causing of death is necessary ingredients of offence under section 92 of Factories Act, and therefore, this Court opined that when worker suffered death while discharging their obligation under the terms of employment and they were performing their duties which they were assigned by the factory management and the occupier and then the occupier was convicted under section 92 of Factories Act, the proceedings in case filed on police report under sections 287 and 304A IPC cannot continue. 7. However, in this case, the ingredients of section 47 do not specifically provide punishment for causing death due to negligence in taking safety measures. Here the punishment prescribed is only 3 months and fine is only upto Rs.2,000/-, and therefore, due to such lapse on the part of the contractor when a death is caused, the matter is covered under section 304A of IPC, and therefore, principles laid down in case of Neeraj Verma (supra), do not apply in the present case. However, it may be mentioned that since both the offences had took place under the same transaction, they should have been tried together but as two different agencies filed the complaint/charge-sheet before the learned Magistrate, this situation arose, and therefore, so far as the merit of the present application is concerned, this application deserves to be dismissed, as in this case death is caused and this creates independent offence under section 304A IPC. However, while disposing the application, it is directed that if found guilty under section 304A IPC, while awarding punishment on the present applicant, the fact that he had already fined for Rs.8,000/- for another offence of not taking proper measures of safety which resulted in causing of death of the worker should be taken into consideration. 8. With this observations and directions, this application stands disposed of.