Surisetty Narasimha Rao v. The State Of A.P

HONOURABLE SRI JUSTICE M. SATYANARAYANA MURTHY CRIMINAL PETITION Nos.3217 AND 3226 OF 2017 COMMON ORDER:

These two criminal petitions are filed by one Puram Satish Kumar and Surisetty Narasimha Rao, who are arrayed as accused in Crime No.122 of 2017 of Machavaram Police Station, Vijayawada City, registered for the offences under Sections 193, 468, 471 and 420 IPC and Section 12 of the Indian Passport Act, seeking a direction to the Station House Officer to release them on bail in the event of their arrest, apprehending their arrest.

The de facto complainant M. Sampath Kumar, who is working as a Cashier in the Indian Bank, lodged a complaint with the police, Machavaram Police Station, alleging that on 17.02.2017 he received a phone call from Hyderabad asking him about some unknown persons and he stated that he has no acquaintance with those persons. Thereafter, on 22.02.2017, he was called to Hyderabad by the officials of the American Consulate where he was shown photographs of some persons and asked him about their particulars. The de facto complainant stated that he was not aware of the particulars of those persons. Then, the officials told him that those persons applied for American Visa by using the documents of the son and daughter-in-law of the de facto complainant. Those documents were submitted in respect of sanction of loan to the Indiabulls Housing, but the de facto complainant has not taken any loan.

The petitioners are the passport agents, son and the daughter-inlaw of the de facto complaint applied for obtaining VISA to go to America, but the agents affixed different photographs on the

applications and other documents for obtaining VISA and used those documents as genuine and thereby, committed the offence under the above provisions.

The main contention of the petitioners is that they are no way concerned with the offences alleged against them, and they are only passport agents and the basis for implicating them in the above case is the confession made by A5.

It is difficult for this Court to conclude that the petitioners did commit no offence and that apart, investigation is not yet completed and the offences committed by the petitioners are serious in nature in view of the prevailing circumstances in USA for obtaining VISA. Hence, I do not find any reason to grant pre-arrest bail to the petitioners. Accordingly, both the Criminal Petitions are dismissed. __________________________ M. SATYANARAYANA MURTHY, J April 27, 2017 KTL