- (1.) The Revision Petition is against the orders of the Additional District Judge, Jalandhar, dated 05.02.2015 whereby on an application under Order XXI Rule 32 CPC, the petitioners have been ordered to be detained in civil imprisonment for three months for having failed to comply with the Order of the Company Law Board, Principal Bench, New Delhi ("CLB") dated 09.12.2013, insofar as complete records of the company Krishna Real Estate Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. have not been supplied by them to the respondents in pursuance of that order. The petitioners shall be interchangeably referred to defendants, Sayals and judgmentdebtors. The respondents shall be referred interchangeably as decree holders and Malhotras.
(2.) The respondents had filed Company Petition No. 48 (N.D.) of 2012 before the CLB against the petitioner defendants complaining oppression and mismanagement of the affairs of Krishna Real Estate Enterprises Pvt. Ltd., under sections 397, 398, 399, 402 and 403 of the Companies Act, 1956. The said petition was allowed by the CLB by an order dated 09.12.2013 directing the defendants, inter alia, to hand over the physical possession of the company's assets as well as all kinds of management of the company, which remained with them, to the Malhotras. It was also held that the defendants were answerable to the Board for the accounts they maintained from the date of A.K. Malhotra's death (on 30.12.2009). Consequently, in pursuance of the CLB order, certain documents and records were handed over to the respondents in the presence of the Administrator-cum-Facilitator. However, it was the contention of the decree holders that the entire records of the company, since inception, were not handed over and that the defendants were still in possession of other records crucial to the company's management, which they were willfully and intentionally withholding. The judgment debtors, on the other hand, state that whatever records they had since the inception of the company (in 1997) which were in their possession have been handed over to the respondents, in line with the CLB Order.
(3.) The court below, acting as Execution Court of the CLB order, detailed the documents which according to him were still being retained by the judgment debtors, and assessed their conduct to be in disobedience of the direction contained in the CLB order to hand over the management and has ordered the judgment debtors to be arrested for a period of three months. In revision, there has been an interim order of stay and the matter requires consideration of whether there is any serious fallibility about the factual reference of deliberate nonproduction for interference in civil revision and also examine if it is true, the non-production of records could constitute failure to hand over the management of the affairs of the company. If yes again, whether the punishment accorded commensurate with the misconduct of disobedience of the decree attributed to the petitioners.;