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AHMEDABAD: The next time you say an angry ‘Main tujhe dekh loonga’ (I will see to you) to someone, the bad news is that it can land you in legal trouble. The good news now is that it will not stand legal scrutiny, as the Gujarat high court has refused to accept it as an expression of criminal intimidation communicating a threat of injury.

The HC remarked so while quashing an FIR against a lawyer, Mohamad Mohsin Chhalotiya. The advocate from Prantij in Sabarkantha was put behind bars in 2017 for threatening cops by saying ‘he would see to all of them’ and he would ‘drag them to the high court’. Ironically, it was the lawyer who ended up at the HC, albeit seeking quashing of the FIR filed by the cops.

“The threat must cause alarm in the mind of the victim. No such feature emerged in the present case,” Justice A S Supehia observed in the order signed on Wednesday.

The case history of the altercation that led to the FIR says Chhalotiya had gone to meet his clients, who were locked up in Prantij police station in Sabarkantha. Police objected to the lawyer speaking to the accused near the lock-up and told him to leave. This led to a heated argument, where the agitated lawyer allegedly told policemen that he would see to them all and that he would drag them to court. The cops registered an FIR against him under Sections 186, 189 and 506(1) of the IPC, for obstructing a government officer from his duty, threatening a government official with injury, and criminal intimidation.

The high court order signed on Wednesday quashed the FIR against the lawyer while observing that his warning “I will see to you”, cannot be considered criminal intimidation or a threat to the officer.

“Assuming the petitioner has uttered the aforesaid words (I will see to you), the same will not satisfy the ingredients of the expression ‘threat of injury’, since merely during an altercation, if he utters such words it will not amount to an intention to inflict injury, loss or pain. Unquestionably, the mere threat to approach the high court does not denote injury,” the court said in the order.

For Chhalotiya, it was contended that no law bars an advocate from providing legal advice to his client and his arrest was a violation of the fundamental right of the prisoners he was speaking to. It was wrong on the part of the policemen to have interfered with the lawyer’s functioning.

After hearing the case, the HC quashed the FIR. It said that Section 186 of the IPC, for obstructing a government officer’s functioning, is a non-cognizable offence and the cops did not follow the procedure laid down under Section 195 of the CrPC. Since Section 189 of the IPC, which is the threat of injury, is also the fallout of the same statement, the complaint was untenable.

