U. Durga Prasad Rao, J. - (1.)In this Criminal Petition, filed under section 482 of Cr.P.C, the petitioner/accused seeks to quash the proceedings against him in Crime No.45 of 2019 of Machilipatnam Town Police Station, Krishna District, registered for the offences under sections 509, 354-A of IPC and section 67 of Information Technology Act, 2000-2008 (for short, 'the IT Act').
(2.)The de-facto complainant works as Civil Assistant Surgeon in District Hospital, Machilipatnam. The accused is the Staff Reporter of Andhra Prabha Telugu Daily. She gave complaint to Police stating that the accused has been sending objectionable and obscene messages to her insinuatingly seeking sexual favours from her. On her complaint, the Police registered the crime and commenced investigation. It appears section 41-A Cr.P.C notice was served on the accused to attend for interrogation. Be that it may, the Police also got recorded section 164 of Cr.P.C statement of the de-facto complainant from learned II Additional Judicial Magistrate of First Class, Machilipatnam. During the course of investigation, on obtaining the legal opinion through learned Public Prosecutor, the Investigating Officer added sections 3(1)(w)(ii) and 3(2)(va) of SCs and STs (POA) Act, 1989 (for short, 'the Act of 1989') in the F.I.R. Investigation is reported to be pending. Hence, the instant Criminal Petition.
(3.)Heard learned counsel for petitioner, learned Additional Public Prosecutor appearing for the 1st respondent-State, and perused the record.