The Supreme Court’s vacation bench has implied that by issuing “cyclostyled” orders, a judge may be mechanically copying and pasting a previous order, without applying her mind to the unique facts of each case. 

——-

THE Supreme Court has disapproved of high courts passing “cyclostyled” orders without appreciating the facts of each case while granting interim protection from coercive action to the petitioner facing a First Information Report[FIR] in a cheating case.

“Prima facie, we are of the view that while passing these orders, the learned Judge has not taken pains to look into the merits of the matter and has passed cyclostyled orders”, a vacation bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and B.V. Nagarathna observed.

The bench was hearing an appeal against the Uttarakhand High Court’s order refusing to quash the FIR. Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora, for the petitioners, contended that the petitioners had tried to persuade the high court to appreciate the facts on merits for quashing the FIR, but the order passed by the high court did not disclose even the bare facts.

The bench went through various orders passed by Justice Alok Kumar Verma of the High Court, only to observe that he was disposing of the criminal writ petitions in a “cyclostyled” manner.

Disapproving the high court’s order, the bench said it could not appreciate the high court’s order passed under Article 226 of the Constitution. It thus set aside the high court’s order and restored the case on the file of the High Court for hearing on its own merits, in accordance with the law.

The bench also requested the chief justice of the high court to assign the case to another judge. Besides, it restrained the police from taking any coercive action against the petitioners and granted liberty to them to file an application seeking interim protection from the High Court. The High Court had disposed of the petition seeking quashing of the FIR simply with a direction to the Station House Officer[SHO] to follow the decision of the Supreme Court in Arnesh Kumar vs. State of Bihar which lays down guidelines to be followed while arresting a person.

Click here to read the Supreme Court’s order.