The Kerala High Court on Monday stated that the definition of “fraudulently” satisfies if there was a non-economic advantage to the deceiver or a non-economic loss to the deceived, and that both elements need not exist together. The Single Judge Bench of Justice K. Babu has made it clear that expression “defraud” consists two elements, namely, deceit and injury.

The case resulted in such explanation is as follows: The first petitioner, the wife possessed a car owned by her dead husband.The wife, allegedly, with the assistanced of her brother, second petitioner, submitted documents to gainf permanent registration of the said vehicle in the name of her deceased husband, without telling that her husband was not alive at the time document submission.The officers at the Road Transport Office, thereby, registered the vehicle in the name of the deceased, following which the petitioners tried to get rid of the said car.

Subsequently, the father of the deceased registered complaint accusing the petitioners to have committed the offences punishable under Sections 465 (Punishment for Forgery), 468 (Forgery for the purposes of cheating), 471 (Using as genuine a Forged Document) and 420 (Cheating) read with Section 34 of of IPC.

The court observes that though Prosecution claims that the petitioners attempted to cheat the officers of the Regional Transport Office, but there was not enough evidence to validate the same with regarding forging documents in question. Justice Babu also notes that the prosecution also had no argument that both petitioners received any wrongful gain or loss to any other individual.

The court, therefore, expressed the view that continuation of the lawsuit would constitute an abuse of the Court proceedings. Hence, it revoked the case against the petitioners.

(With inputs from Live Law)