In a major ruling defending citizens against multi-pronged legal harassment, the Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has quashed a criminal case against a 54-year-old Delhi resident. The court ruled that three parallel cases filed against him over a single social media campaign were “carbon copies” designed to systematically exhaust his resources.
Justice M A Chowdhary, presiding over the case, delivered a scathing assessment of the litigation strategy used by the complainant real estate company. He warned that allowing a single act to be split into multiple cases across different jurisdictions creates a “dangerous precedent for judicial anarchy.”
“The criminal justice system cannot be allowed to be utilised as a tool for corporate vendetta or to settle personal scores through the systematic exhaustion of a citizen’s resources and liberty,” the High Court’s May 14 order declared.
The Roots of the Dispute: A Rs 700-Crore Accusation
The legal battle stems from a bitter conflict between the petitioner, Delhi-resident Vishvendra Singh, and a prominent real estate developer. Singh, who describes himself as a whistleblower, claimed to be one of the victims of a massive Rs 700-crore real estate fraud that took place between 2009 and 2014.
According to Singh, builder Ashish Bhalla siphoned off Rs 700 crore from AN Buildwell Pvt Ltd to establish his own entity, the WTC Group of companies. Singh further alleged that the WTC Group had recently begun selling residential plots on agricultural land in Faridabad, Haryana, without securing the mandatory Directorate of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) license or Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) registration.
Following complaints filed by Singh, regulatory authorities initiated action against the developer. In response, Singh alleged that the company launched a multi-jurisdictional legal attack to silence him.
The primary trigger for the criminal complaints was an online campaign. Following an investment event held by the real estate company at the Sejour Hotel in Humhama in August 2021, Singh initiated a Twitter trend on September 12, 2021, titled “Anti India WTC – TALIBAN – ACT.” The company claimed this online trend was a deliberate attempt to defame its brand.
A ‘Multi-Jurisdictional’ Strategy to Harass
In the wake of the Twitter campaign, three separate criminal proceedings were triggered against Singh in Srinagar, Budgam, and New Delhi.
Representing Singh, advocates Vikas Malik and Mushtaq Ahmad Dar argued that the real estate developer had engaged in blatant “forum shopping.” They revealed that the complainant had actively concealed prior cases from the courts—hiding the initial Srinagar proceedings when filing in Budgam, and concealing both Jammu and Kashmir proceedings when registering the third case in Delhi.
The defense argued that this multi-pronged prosecution violated Singh’s constitutional protections against double jeopardy under Article 20(2) and Article 21 of the Constitution of India. They further noted that Singh, a Delhi resident, was being forced to travel to J&K, where he faced stalking and persistent harassment.
The High Court agreed with the defense’s assessment, finding that the allegations in all three jurisdictions were virtually identical. The court observed that triggering simultaneous cases in Delhi, Srinagar, and Budgam over a singular online act was a textbook example of “forum shopping” aimed at intimidation.
By keeping the respective courts in the dark about parallel cases, the developer had engaged in a “gross abuse of judicial process” to secure conflicting or multiple orders, the court ruled.
State’s Defense Rejected
During the proceedings, Deputy Advocate General Bikramdeep Singh defended the state’s actions, arguing that the petition to quash the FIR was legally untenable. The state contended that a single act could constitute multiple distinct offenses, arguing that while the Srinagar complaint focused on defamation, the Budgam FIR addressed separate offenses of forgery and public mischief.
The state also justified the FIR by alleging that the petitioner had used “anti-national” narratives against the company and had refused to cooperate with the ongoing police investigation.
However, the High Court rejected these arguments, reaffirming that facts of the exact same occurrence cannot be broken into pieces to sustain multiple complaints. Finding that the Budgam FIR was filed to harass rather than to carry out a bona fide criminal investigation, Justice Chowdhary quashed the proceedings, drawing a firm line against the misuse of state machinery for corporate retaliation.
