No transaction, no victim, no crime, says Karnataka HC, quashing BDA allotment letter scam case against five

View of Karnataka High Court. | Photo credit: FILE PHOTO

The Karnataka High Court has stayed criminal proceedings against five private individuals who were named as accused along with some Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) officials in 2020, on charges of illegally preparing site allotment letters in various BDA layouts.

The court pointed out that there is “not a single victim” of forgery in the case and no document alleged to have been forged by the accused has been brought into execution. Moreover, the court noted that “the seized documents were not even sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory to detect forgery.”

Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order while allowing petitions filed by M. Inder Kumar, a film producer who has a production company called Rendha – The Cinema People; Vinod Raj C., Broker; Naveen Kumar, the then contract computer operator in BDA; Mohan Kumar, Computer Operator at Redhan, and Lakshmankumar HR, Joint Secretary of Karnataka Dalita Kendra.

No prosecution penalty

Curiously, the court pointed out that the BDA argued for continuation of the criminal proceedings against the petitioners, while the BDA did not grant sanction for the prosecution of its officials against whom the court had already quashed the proceedings in the same case for lack of sanction for their prosecution.

“Though the High Court permitted the BDA to grant sanction for prosecuting its accused officials, the BDA did not grant the sanction on October 16, 2026,” Justice Nagaprasanna observed while noting that the allotment letters seized from the petitioners were all genuine and hence not sent for forensic test. BDA claimed that seat allotment letters were found in the film producer’s office.

“There is no victim alleged to have been lured by the petitioners into a transaction with dishonest intent from the outset. In the instant case, no transaction took place. The very allegation is that it could have taken place. This cannot amount to the offense of fraud. The same applies to the offense under Section 406, the offense of breach of trust… The petitioners did not meet the penalty even when committing the alleged offense of attempting to commit them,” they said. the proposers.

Published – 29 Oct 2026 20:34 IST