Examine the scope and limits of the High Court's inherent powers to quash criminal proceedings. Illustrate with a recent case.

Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 — successor to Section 482 CrPC — saves the High Court's inherent power to pass orders to give effect to the Sanhita, prevent abuse of the process of any court, or secure the ends of justice [1]. The power is wide in scope but deliberately narrow in exercise.

Scope of the power

• Saving, not conferment: it recognises a pre-existing plenary power of the High Court, exercisable to quash an FIR, a private complaint, a summons, or an entire proceeding [1].
• State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal (1990) catalogued illustrative categories for quashing: allegations disclosing no prima facie offence, inherently improbable or absurd allegations, a legal bar to prosecution, and prosecutions actuated by mala fide or personal vendetta [2].
• It supplements, and can run alongside, the writ jurisdiction under Article 226.

Limits on the power

• To be used sparingly, with circumspection, in the rarest of rare cases — not as a matter of course [2].
• No mini-trial at the threshold: the court cannot weigh defence evidence or resolve disputed facts, which belong to trial.
• It is not a substitute for statutory remedies of appeal or revision; interference requires perversity or illegality in the impugned order.

Recent illustration — Bombay High Court, September 2026

• The Court dismissed a plea by the Leader of Opposition, Lok Sabha to quash a 2019 Girgaon Magistrate summons in a private criminal defamation complaint (Section 500, IPC) filed by a BJP member over remarks at a 2018 Jaipur rally [3].
• Justice N.R. Borkar found no "perversity and illegality" in the magistrate's order — applying precisely the restraint standard [3].
• Balancing equities, the Court continued its 2021 order deferring the magistrate's hearing by six weeks to permit a Supreme Court appeal [3]. Refusal to quash is not conviction; guilt remains to be tried.
• The complaint faced no legal bar, since Subramanian Swamy v. Union of India (2016) upheld criminal defamation as a reasonable restriction under Article 19(2) [4].

Inherent power is thus a safety valve against abuse of process, not an appellate short-circuit of trial. Judicious, reasoned use — coupled with faster trial disposal and a considered legislative debate on decriminalising defamation — would better secure both the accused's liberty and the complainant's dignity, keeping speech and reputation in the constitutional balance Article 19 envisages.