Sanjiv Khanna, J. - (1.)Leave granted in Special Leave Petitions.
(2.)A Division Bench of this Court (Jagdish Singh Khehar and Arun Mishra, JJ.) vide order dated November 18, 2014, noticing that the issues that arise have far reaching and serious consequences, had referred the aforesaid appeals to be heard by a Bench of at least three Judges. After obtaining appropriate directions from Hon'ble the Chief Justice, these appeals have been listed before the present Bench.
(3.)For the sake of convenience, we have treated the Criminal Appeal arising out of Special Leave Petition (Criminal) No. 1513 of 2011, filed by Nevada Properties Pvt. Ltd., as the lead case. This appeal arises from judgment of the High Court of Judicature at Bombay dated November 29, 2010 wherein the majority judgment has held that the expression 'any property' used in sub-section (1) of Section 102 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (hereinafter referred to as the 'Code') does not include immovable property and, consequently, a police officer investigating a criminal case cannot take custody of and seize any immovable property which may be found under circumstances which create suspicion of the commission of any offence. According to the majority judgment, earlier decision of the Division Bench of the same High Court in Kishore Shankar Signapurkar v. State of Maharashtra and Others,1997 4 LJ 793 lays down the correct ratio and the contrary view expressed in M/s. Bombay Science and Research Education Institute v. The State of Maharashtra and Others, 2008 AllMR(Cri) 2133 does not lay down the correct law. The minority view holds that the police officer has power to seize any property, whether movable or immovable, under Section 102 of the Code and the decision of the Division Bench in M/s. Bombay Science and Research Education Institute (supra) lays down the correct law and the ratio in Kishore Shankar Signapurkar (supra) is not good law.