The Punjab and Haryana High Court on November 12, 2025, refused to quash an FIR in a cyber-fraud case, stating that the criminal process cannot give way to a private settlement. Badri Mandal and others had asked the court to quash the FIR registered on June 27, 2025, at the Sonipat Cyber Police Station, after seven unauthorised transactions worth Rs 14.8 lakh were withdrawn from the complainant’s bank account through fraudulent means.
Justice Sumeet Goel heard the matter and noted that although the accused and the complainant had executed a compromise deed on September 20, 2025, the nature of the allegations required the court to consider broader public interest.
The bench emphasised the systemic impact of cybercrime, stressing that digital-finance offences erode public trust and cannot be treated merely as private disputes amenable to negotiation. The court observed that allowing settlements to nullify such prosecutions would risk turning restitution into a tool for offenders to escape accountability, thereby undermining deterrence.
Consequently, the High Court refused to quash the proceedings, holding that cyber-fraud cases attract a public-law dimension that supersedes private compromise.
Cyberfraud Cases And Private Compromise
Justice Sumeet Goel said cyber-fraud qualifies as a sui generis offence, a category of its own, and that courts should not quash such cases through private compromise. He stressed that cyber-fraud inflicts public, not merely individual, harm. Consequently, private settlements cannot neutralise their broader impact on digital security and public trust. “The contemporary felony of cyber fraud presents a transgression sui generis,” he wrote, adding that it causes “systemic erosion of trust” and “pervasive public detriment” that supersede private settlements.
Moreover, the judge described cyber-fraud as a “corrosive insurgency” against the financial system, warning that its effects extend far beyond a single victim. The visible monetary loss is only “the tip of the spear”, he observed; the real damage falls on the digital ecosystem as a whole. This, he said, makes cyber-fraud an offence with clear public-law dimensions—one that cannot be treated as a private dispute amenable to negotiation.
Furthermore, Justice Goel cautioned that allowing quashing simply because the accused repays the victim would reduce criminal liability to a “mere calculus of profit and risk”, enabling offenders to treat restitution as a routine escape route. Such a practice would “create a deleterious lacuna in the law” and embolden organised cybercrime networks.
He also acknowledged that victims often agree to settlements because restitution is the only realistic way to retrieve stolen funds. However, he held that this “allurement of monetary restitution” cannot dilute the public harm inherent in cyber-fraud.
While he recognised that some FIRs misuse the term “cyber fraud” to…
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