HC dismisses ‘documents stealing’ case against Fadnavis

Nagpur: In a respite to leader of opposition Devendra Fadnavis, the Nagpur bench of Bombay high court (HC) dismissed a case filed by lawyer Satish Uke accusing him of obtaining petition copy from government pleader’s office through unauthorized means. Uke had claimed that the former chief minister had filed an intervention application in his petition based on “stolen documents”.
A division bench comprising justices Vinay Deshpande and Amit Borkar clarified that the petitioner’s contentions didn’t disclose any cognizable offence. “On consideration of overall facts and circumstances, we’re of the view that there’s no necessity of conducting any inquiry to ascertain whether the cognizable offence is disclosed or not. We don’t find that the allegations in the complaint satisfy ingredients of any of the offences under the Official Secrets Act, 1923.”
The bench added that merely because Fadnavis used the documents’ copies in judicial proceedings, it can’t be said that he removed the documents with “dishonest” intention.
“The copies are produced in support of Fadnavis's case to enable HC to effectively adjudicate his rights in a judicial proceeding involving alleged commission of the offence. He has used those only to vindicate his stand in the writ petition. Therefore, there is no ‘dishonest intention’ on his part causing ‘wrongful loss’ to the petitioner or the GP office and getting ‘wrongful gain’ for himself,” the judges said.