Calcutta High Court: The Bench of Siddhartha Chattopadhyay,J. rejected a revisional application by holding that, if a statute specifies a maximum period of investigation, then the Court cannot take that right off and also the Court cannot direct any authority further, until the statutory period of limitation gets over.
A complaint was filed stating that a press conference was conducted by the opposite parties to malign some political parties in which a few photographs were displayed of certain politicians offering sweets to each other and the said pictures were released in the public domain. In spite of complaining to several authorities and getting no satisfactory response and action being taken, this revisional application was filed.
The complainant reached Chief Metropolitan Magistrate with the same issue, for which the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate did not apply his mind and decided that the offence does not lie under the IT Act. The State finding was dismissed by the court at the initial stage of an issue.
Concluding the issue, the Court held that an issue like this requires scientific investigation, which clearly cannot be expected from a police officer, so for that reason the intimation given by O.C. cyber crime in regard to the legal opinion being sought on the same has to be due regarded and allegation on police for rejecting the complaint outright is not correct, as, cyber law is not dependent on any other code of law and further the Court has to also abide with the statutory limitation, as it cannot go beyond that, for which the investigation has to be concluded in terms of Section 167(5) CrPC. [Jay Prakash Majumdar v. State of West Bengal, 2017 SCC OnLine Cal 16163 decided on 05-12-2017]
“Outright” itself is an adverb. There is no need to add the suffix ‘ly’ to it to form an adverb of manner. The correct structure would be “rejecting the complaint outright”.