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The Allahabad High Court recently refused to grant bail to a man accused of running a fraud scheme for which the name and photograph of the Prime Minister of India were used. 

The bench of Justice Om Prakash Tripathi passed the order on the bail plea moved by one Rajesh Singh in a case registered under Sections 409, 420, 120-B of the Indian Penal Code. 

As per the prosecution story, Singh and 5 others, two years ago, had started an advertisement company, namely, Doorotisers Media Pvt. Ltd. Co. (catchy pixel) to earn money by using digitization.

In the name of the company, Singh published an advertisement to earn Rs. 5,000 per month for a period of 7 years from one's home. For this offer, the company did advertisements on social media and also used the name and photograph of the Prime Minister of India.

Allegedly, after seeing this offer, one Arvind Kumar Srivastava (informant in the case) went to Singh's office who told Srivastava that he would be given a TV and if he regularly watches the TV for 4-6 hours and 22 days in a month, Singh would pay Rs.5000 per month to him.

Believing the same, Srivastava deposited Rs.45,000 through cheque for one LED TV, Rs.38,000 for upgradation of the TV on April 23, 2020 and Rs.83,000 for booking another LED TV on May 3, 2020 via google pay. The total amount paid by Srivastava was Rs.1,66,000.

However, in the First Information Report, Srivastava alleged that the company neither paid any amount to him nor gave him any connection of the LED TV. Thereafter, in June 2020, the company got closed.

Praying for Singh's release on bail, his counsel argued that Singh was innocent and had been falsely implicated in the present case due to an ulterior motive.

He submitted that Singh had only purchased the franchise of the Company named Catchy Pixel seeing an advertisement on Youtube and he himself was a victim as cheating was committed by the company and he was in no way involved in any forgery.

On the other hand, opposing Singh's bail, the Additional Government Advocate had alleged that Singh is the proprietor of master franchise Catchy Pixel and it was on his assurance that Srivastava had deposited the money. He also apprised the court that Singh has criminal history of four cases, relating to cheating and misappropriation of money.

Having considered submissions made by both the parties, Court rejected Singh's bail plea and directed the Trial Court to expedite the trial of the case and conclude the same as expeditiously as possible from the date of receipt of a certified/computerized copy of the order.

Case Title: Rajesh Singh v. State of U.P.