HC slaps cost on petitioner for suppressing facts

Patna: The Patna high court on Wednesday imposed a cost of Rs 50,000 on a writ petitioner who obtained an interim relief from the court by concealing about his credentials of previous litigations.

A single bench of Justice Arun Kumar Jha while dismissing the criminal writ petition of one Vinod Kumar Mishra, imposed the cost on the writ petitioner for not approaching the court "with clean hands".

The court directed Vinod to deposit the cost amount in the office of Patna HC legal services committee within a period of four weeks.

Vinod had filed a criminal writ application for quashing of an FIR lodged at Chapra town police station lodged by one Awadh Bihari Pandey, accusing Vinod of swindling Rs 32 lakh on pretext of providing residential land at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. Vinod was arrested and remained under judicial custody for few months until the high court granted him provisional bail on the condition that he refunds the amount to Awadh within four months.

However, Vinod did not pay back the money and his provisional bail was cancelled by the high court on May 9. Thereafter, he preferred the writ application for stay of his arrest and quashing of police case, but he concealed entire fact about his earlier bail application made before the same court. Having no knowledge about the earlier petitioners of Vinod, the high court had stayed his arrest on June 24 this year.

Awadh's counsel Rohit Singh appeared and appraised the high court how Vinod misused the privilege of bail by not refunding the amount and further dodged the court by concealing his past credentials and obtaining stay order on his arrest.