J&K HC orders FIR against Facebook, others in online fraud case

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court has ordered the UT’s Crime Branch to register an FIR against Facebook India Online Services and seven others and conduct investigations into a complaint of online fraud against them.

Setting aside an order passed by the Special Railway Magistrate, Jammu, Justice Dhiraj Singh Thakur of High Court ordered the Cyber Cell in-charge to register an FIR, which should be investigated by the Branch concerned, “dealing with cyber offences’’.

The others against whom the court wants probe to conducted are Hyderabad-based Facebook India’s country head Ajit Mohan; Pune-based Bajaj Finance Limited and its MD, Rajiv Jain; Mohali-based Quadrant Televentures Ltd; besides directors of Quadrant Teleservices Ltd – Dinesh A Kadam and Pritesh G Lahoti; and Aman Singh Chaurhdary, an employee of Bajaj Finserv.

The order came on a petition filed in HC by one Vivek Sagar against an order of the Special Railway Magistrate, who, while disposing of a complaint of alleged online fraud, held that “ex facie the cognizable offences are found to have been committed’’ and directed the SSP, Crime Branch, Jammu, “to look into the allegations”. The trial court held that “if some cognizable offence is found to have been committed by the accused persons, then only an FIR shall be registered and the occurrence shall be investigated forthwith”.

The trial court directed the SSP to submit compliance report with 15 days .

The complainant’s counsel, said that “if the learned magistrate was satisfied that cognizable offences were on the face of it had been committed, then there was no occasion for him to leave it open to the respondents to look into the allegations to determine whether cognizable offences had been committed”.

In his complaint, Sagar had alleged that he had been duped of Rs 20,700 by online fraudsters on the pretext of granting him loan. The complaint was filed before the Railway Magistrate after the police declined to register an FIR.

The loan, according to Sagar, was offered by Bajaj Finance Ltd through Facebook.