repossession without any injury is civil dispute

 Learned senior counsel for the appellants contended that the
allegations against the appellants in their personal capacity are vague.
He further contended that Appellant No. 1 herein joined the State Bank of
Travancore on 11.05.2006 i.e. subsequent to the Assignment Deed dated
29.03.2006. He was, however, admittedly working with the Bank on
11.01.2007, when the complainant Company entered into the Deed of
Assignment with the Kotak Mahindra Bank. As regards Appellant No. 2
herein, though he was signatory to the Deed of Assignment dated 29.03.2006,
he submitted that he was not in service of State Bank of Travancore on the
date on which Deed of Assignment dated 11.01.2007, was executed between the
complainant-Company and the Kotak Mahindra Bank and hence he claims to have
no connection whatsoever with the offence alleged. He further contended
that the IPC does not contain any provision for attaching vicarious
liability on the part of the Chairman and General Managers of the Company
when the accused is the Company. When the Company is the offender,
vicarious liability of the directors cannot be imputed automatically, in
the absence of any statutory provisions to this effect.
12) In support of his claim, learned senior counsel for the appellant
cited a decision of this Court in Maksud Saiyed vs. State of Gujarat and
Others (2008) 5 SCC 668 wherein it was held as under:-
“13. Where a jurisdiction is exercised on a complaint petition filed
in terms of Section 156(3) or Section 200 of the Code of Criminal
Procedure, the Magistrate is required to apply his mind. The Penal
Code does not contain any provision for attaching vicarious liability
on the part of the Managing Director or the Directors of the Company
when the accused is the Company. The learned Magistrate failed to pose
unto himself the correct question viz. as to whether the complaint
petition, even if given face value and taken to be correct in its
entirety, would lead to the conclusion that the respondents herein
were personally liable for any offence. The Bank is a body corporate.
Vicarious liability of the Managing Director and Director would arise
provided any provision exists in that behalf in the statute. Statutes
indisputably must contain provision fixing such vicarious liabilities.
Even for the said purpose, it is obligatory on the part of the
complainant to make requisite allegations which would attract the
provisions constituting vicarious liability.”

13) In support of his claim that the transactions between the complainant
and the State Bank of Travancore were purely civil in nature and criminal
court has nothing to do with it, learned senior counsel for the appellants
further relied upon a decision of this Court in Sardar Trilok Singh and
Others vs. Satya Deo Tripathi (1979) 4 SCC 396 wherein it was held as
under:-

“5…..The question as to what were the terms of the settlement and whether
they were duly incorporated in the printed agreement or not were all
questions which could be properly and adequately decided in a civil
court. Obtaining signature of a person on blank sheet of papers by itself
is not an offence of forgery or the like. It becomes an offence when the
paper is fabricated into a document of the kind which attracts the
relevant provisions of the Penal Code making it an offence or when such a
document is used as a genuine document. Even assuming that the appellants
either by themselves or in the Company of some others went and seized the
truck on July 30, 1973 from the house of the respondent they could and
did claim to have done so in exercise of their bona fide right of seizing
the truck on the respondent’s failure to pay the third monthly
installment in time. It was, therefore, a bona fide civil dispute which
led to the seizure of the truck. On the face of the complaint petition
itself the highly exaggerated version given by the respondent, the
appellants went to his house with a mob armed with deadly weapons and
committed the offence of dacoity in taking away the truck was so very
unnatural and untrustworthy that it could take the matter out of the
realm of civil dispute. Nobody on the side of the respondent was hurt.
Even a scratch was not given to anybody.
6. In our opinion on the facts and in the circumstances of this case
criminal prosecution deserves to be quashed. On behalf of the respondent
it was argued that the appellants’ filing a petition in the High Court
for quashing the proceeding before issuance of the summons was premature
and the High Court could not have quashed it. In our opinion the point is
so wholly without substance that it has been stated merely to be
rejected. Since the parties during the course of the hearing in this
appeal showed their inclination to settle up and end all their disputes
and quarrels in relation to the matter in question after we indicated our
view that we are going to allow the appeal and quash the proceedings, we
have not thought it necessary to elaborately give other reasons in
support of our order”.