Recently, the Punjab and Haryana high court has quashed a criminal case registered by Patiala Police in 2020 against Punjabi singer Gurnam Singh Bhullar.

The criminal case was registered back during the pandemic period for not wearing masks, and flouting social distancing norms on July 11, 2020, while shooting at a mall.

Singer moves to the high court seeking quashing of the FIR on May 22. The police had filed a challan also against him.

The single-headed bench of Justice Gurbir Singh quashed the criminal proceedings observing that the police registered the FIR in question on the complaint of a policeman but did not follow the mandatory provisions of Section 195 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), as per which complaint could be filed only by the officer whose orders were violated and not by the police based on an investigation.

“The registration of FIR in the instant case is an abuse of the process of law,” the bench said, quashing the challan and the criminal case.

“The maximum punishment for Section 51 of the Disaster Management Act is two years, so the offence is non-cognizable, and a complaint is required to be filed in the court, and the court can take cognizance only on the complaint made by the concerned authority for violation of any provision of the said Act,” the bench recorded, adding that any offence under the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 is deemed to be an offence under Section 188 of the code.

“The Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 does not prescribe any specific punishment. Since the punishment under Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) is prescribed, so procedure under Section 188 of the code is to be followed by the prosecuting agency for prosecuting a person under the Epidemic Diseases Act. In this case, no complaint has been filed, but police after registration of the FIR, submitted a challan. So, there is a clear violation of the provisions of Section 195 of the code,” the bench further recorded.