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Miscellaneous Writ Petition No. 15174 of 2022 by which the High Court rejected the Writ Petition filed by appellants herein thereby declining to quash the aforesaid FIR.

FACTUAL MATRIX

3. The respondent No. 4 herein namely Ram Kumar lodged FIR No. 224 of 2022 for the offences enumerated above at the police station also referred to above. The FIR reads thus:-

“… The undersigned Ramkumar son of Sadhuram is a resident of Kasimpur, P.S. Mirjapur. I want to submit that Haji Iqbal, his son Javed, Wazid, Alishan, Afjal and brother of Iqbal namely Mehmood Ali forcefully started to tell us since long that our land bearing Khasra No. 256/1 situated at Village Mayapur belongs to them. It is in the year 2021 when time for cultivation arrived, that myself and my brother Rajkumar went to the house of Iqbal, son of Abdul Wahid at Mirjapur. We requested him that you people are disturbing the peace and tranquility of us. We said, we were destitudes. It is on that Iqbal, his brother Mehmood and his sons namely Zabed, Wajid, Alishan and Afjal became very furious on us. They started using abusive language against us. We requested them to stop uttering abusive language. It is at that time all these persons assaulted us with their hands and fists for a long time. It is thereafter they on a point of pistol put on my forehead, they took away Rs. 2 lakh kept in my pocket forcefully. Thereafter, all these people stated that if we would talk of this to any one, they would kill all the members of our family. It is then Iqbal told me to sign the stamp paper. After terrorizing and threatening us, they compelled we both brothers to put our signatures on the stamp papers. We being robbed,  we returned silently to our home. We thereafter communicated the present fact before our family members. It is however due to fear of these persons, none of the members of our family supported us against these persons. After thinking a lot and mustering courage, I have come down before your police station for lodging the present report. Applicant Sd/-Rajkumar 19.09.2022-Ram Kumar s/o Sadhuram r/o Kasimpusr, P.S. Mirjapur, District Saharanpur, M.No. 9758031420.” (Emphasis supplied)

(iii) to cause that person to omit to do any act which that person is legally entitled to do as the means of avoiding the execution of such threat.

25. Section 504 of the IPC contemplates intentionally insulting a person and thereby provoking such person insulted to breach the peace or intentionally insulting a person knowing it to be likely that the person insulted may be provoked so as to cause a breach of the public peace or to commit any other offence. Mere abuse may not come within the purview of the section. But, the words of abuse in a particular case might amount to an intentional insult provoking the person insulted to commit a breach of the public peace or to commit any other offence. If abusive language is used intentionally and is of such a nature as would in the ordinary course of events lead the person insulted to break the peace or to commit an offence under the law, the case is not taken away from the purview of the Section merely because the insulted person did not actually break the peace or commit any offence having exercised selfcontrol or having been subjected to abject terror by the offender. In judging whether particular abusive language is attracted by Section 504, IPC, the court has to find out what, in the ordinary circumstances, would be the effect of the abusive language used and not what the complainant actually did as a result of his peculiar idiosyncrasy or cool temperament or sense of discipline. It is the ordinary general nature of the abusive language that is the test for considering whether the abusive language is an intentional insult likely to provoke the person insulted to commit a breach of the peace and not the particular conduct or temperament of the complainant.

26. Mere abuse, discourtesy, rudeness or insolence, may not amount to an intentional insult within the meaning of Section 504, IPC if it does not have the necessary element of being likely to incite the person insulted to commit a breach of the peace of an offence and the other element of the accused intending to provoke the person insulted to commit a breach of the peace or knowing that the person insulted is likely to commit a breach of the peace. Each case of abusive language shall have to be decided in the light of the facts and circumstances of that case and there cannot be a general proposition that no one commits an offence under Section 504, IPC if he merely uses abusive language against the complainant. In King Emperor v. Chunnibhai Dayabhai, (1902) 4 Bom LR 78, a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court pointed out that:-

28. In the facts and circumstances of the case and more particularly, considering the nature of the allegations levelled in the FIR, a prima facie case to constitute the offence punishable under Section 506 of the IPC may probably could be said to have been disclosed but not under Section 504 of the IPC. The allegations with respect to the offence punishable under Section 504 of the IPC can also be looked at from a different perspective. In the FIR, all that the first informant has stated is that abusive language was used by the accused persons. What exactly was uttered in the form of abuses is not stated in the FIR. One of the essential elements, as discussed above, constituting an offence under Section 504 of the IPC is that there should have been an act or conduct amounting to intentional insult. Where that act is the use of the abusive words, it is necessary to know what those words were in order to decide whether the use of those words amounted to intentional insult. In the absence of these words, it is not possible to decide whether the ingredient of intentional insult is present.