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TMI Blog1990 (5) TMI 180X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... pany Petition No. 59 of 1982. I am taking the facts from Criminal Revision No. 671 of 1990. Except for the name of the accused, all the other facts are similar in all the complaints. So, it was pleaded that the accused had joined Birla Cotton, Spinning and Weaving Mills Ltd. as its employee and by virtue of the aforesaid taking over of the said company by the petitioner, the respondent accused became its employee. It was pleaded that the accused had been allowed residential accommodation in the residential colony of Birla Cotton, Spinning and Weaving Mills Ltd. as an employee and he was to surrender the said accommodation on the termination of his services with the said company and the respondent had also signed the allotment letter in that connection after the petitioner became the owner of Birla Cotton, Spinning and Weaving Mills Ltd. and the properties belonging to the said mills and, in that letter of allotment, it was clearly stipulated that the said residential accommodation allotted to him will remain with him till he remains in service and, thereafter, he would give peaceful vacant possession of the said accommodation to the petitioner. It was alleged in the complaint that ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... urt before decision of the criminal case. He has urged that it is the criminal case which should have precedence and the lower court should not have stayed the criminal proceedings till the disposal of the civil suits which are likely to be decided only after a long time. He has placed reliance on certain judgments which I will consider later on. Learned counsel for the respondent, on the other hand, contended that similar orders have been made in some similar matters but the petitioner had not challenged those orders and thus the petitioner is not entitled to challenge the impugned orders by filing the present revision petition. It has been also urged that the crucial questions which would arise in the criminal complaint as well as in the suit would be whether the respondent is an independent tenant or only a licensee in respect of the suit premises and whether the allotment letter being relied upon in the complaint is a genuine document or not. So, he has urged that these questions are complicated questions of law and fact, which could be more properly decided by the civil court and thus the additional Sessions Judge was right in staying the proceedings in the criminal case til ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... t that the purpose of enacting section 630 of the Companies Act is to provide speedy relief to a company when its property is wrongfully obtained or wrongfully withheld by an employee or an ex-employee. In the cited case, the company, after taking a particular flat on lease, had given possession of the flat to an employee but the employee had got issued certain letters from some other employees of the company and filed a civil suit taking the plea that he was the direct tenant of the landlord in the said flat. In a complaint filed against him by the company under section 630 of the Companies Act, he pleaded for stay of the criminal case till the disposal of the civil suit. The High Court had stayed the criminal case placing reliance on the ratio in Damodar Das Jain v. Krishna Charan Chakraborti [1985] 57 Comp. Cas. 115 (Bom) and held that as a bona fide dispute was involved with regard to the property in question, it should be more properly adjudicated by the civil court than by the criminal court. The Supreme Court examined the peculiar facts appearing in that case and held that there was no bona fide dispute being raised by the employee and thus the criminal complaint cannot ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ready seized of the matter and the question of title was to be decided which has been ultimately decided by the civil court, the question of resort to proceedings under section 145, Criminal Procedure Code was misconceived. It was observed that when a civil litigation is pending for a property wherein the question of possession is involved and has been adjudicated, there is hardly any justification for initiating parallel criminal proceedings under section 145 of the Code. That is not the situation here. In Delhi Cloth and General Mills Ltd. v. Kushal Bhan, AIR 1960 SC 806, the Supreme Court observed that though very often employers stay enquiries into the misconduct of employees pending the decision of the criminal trial courts dealing with the same facts and that is fair, it cannot be said that the principles of natural justice require that an employer must wait for the decision at least of the criminal trial court before taking action against an employee. However, if the case is of a grave nature or involves questions of fact or law which are not simple, it would be advisable for the employer to await the decision of the trial court so that the defence of the. employee in ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... gnatures on the allotment letters, in my opinion, would not make the disputed question a complicated one. Prima facie it is difficult to comprehend that the company would resort to forging the signatures of so many employees on the allotment letters. It appears that the respondent and other employees have resorted to filing civil suits only with a view to delay the matter. It has been urged that, in view of the law laid down in Karamchand Ganga Per shad v. Union of India, AIR 1971 SC 1244, that decisions of the civil courts are binding on criminal courts, the criminal proceedings be stayed. I have gone through this judgment and find that no such law has been laid down stating that the criminal court should await the decision of the civil court. It is true that if the civil suit is decided, the judgment given in the civil suit can be produced before the criminal court so that the criminal court may follow the said judgment. In Dharma Pratishthan v. Miss. B. Mandal, IAC [1988] 173 ITR487 (Delhi), the question which arose for decision was whether a criminal complaint filed for offences under the Income-tax Act should be stayed or not till the disposal of the assessment proce ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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