CHANDIGARH: A petition to quash a cyber-fraud case in Haryana has prompted a pointed judicial reflection on how private financial settlements increasingly collide with the public stakes of digital crime. In a recent order, the Punjab and Haryana High Court declined to dismiss an FIR alleging unauthorised bank withdrawals, warning that compromise deals risk turning cyber fraud into a low-consequence, high-reward enterprise.
A Dispute That Escalated Beyond a Private Settlement
When a woman from Haryana reported that seven unauthorised transactions — totalling over ₹14.8 lakh — had drained her bank account, the case first appeared to be a familiar episode of individual financial harm. Months later, however, the accused approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court with an unexpected request: they sought to quash the FIR after reaching what they described as an “amicable settlement.”
According to the petition, a compromise deed dated September 20 recorded that restitution had been made and the complainant no longer wished to pursue the case. Counsel argued that prolonging prosecution would serve “no useful purpose,” as the dispute had ostensibly been resolved in private. But the High Court, in an order that has since drawn attention in legal circles, took a sharply different view.
Judicial Skepticism Toward ‘Artificial’ Cyber Charges
Justice Sumeet Goel, who heard all parties, noted that courts may quash FIRs when cybercrime provisions are strategically invoked in ordinary monetary disputes — a growing pattern in civil–criminal overlaps. Yet he emphasised that the present matter bore none of the markings of such disputes: there was no prior relationship between the accused and the complainant, and the allegations indicated a “genuine cyber fraud.”
The bench warned that allowing settlements to function as an escape hatch in cybercrime cases could distort the criminal justice system.
“Permitting such quashing,” the court observed, “would convert criminal accountability into a calculus of profit and risk.”
The Wider Stakes of a Digital Financial Ecosystem
In a strongly worded portion of the order, the court framed cyber fraud not merely as personal loss but as a systemic threat. It described digital crime as a “corrosive insurgency,” capable of eroding the public financial exchequer and undermining trust in the digital payments architecture that now underpins much of everyday economic life.
“When a cyber fraud is perpetrated,” Justice Goel wrote, “the immediate and visible loss is only the tip of the spear; the real victim is the digital ecosystem itself.”
Private compromise, the judge added, does little to acknowledge this cascading institutional harm, functioning instead as “an ineffectual repudiation of individual liability.”
A Case That Signals Judicial Resistance to ‘Predictable Expense’ Settlements
Ultimately, the court dismissed the plea filed by Babdri Mandal and others seeking directions to quash the June 27, 2025 FIR lodged at the Sonipat Cyber Police Station. The order underscored what the court sees as an emerging pattern: offenders treating restitution not as accountability but as a “predictable expense” of digital crime — one that allows organised networks to operate with relative impunity.
Such settlements, the court warned, create “a lacuna in the law” and risk weakening the sanctity of the criminal justice system at a moment when India’s cyber-fraud landscape is expanding rapidly.
