Himachal High Court lets stand quashing of a gutka/tobacco-products prosecution against a Kullu shop
A Food Safety Officer in Mandi prosecuted a Kullu shop and two traders under Section 34 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, alleging they stored prohibited tobacco products meant for human consumption for sale to the public. The High Court of Himachal Pradesh dismissed the State's criminal revision, holding that no prohibited tobacco product was ever recovered and the complaint rested only on a cash memo, so the quashing of the complaint stood.
This page records what the cited court records say happened. Findings belong to the court or authority that made them; this register adds none of its own. Names of private individuals are withheld unless a naming gate clears them.
How we verify →The complaint stands quashed and the State's revision was dismissed on 13 August 2024; the prosecution is over.
What happened
The High Court recorded that the Food Safety Officer, Mandi, filed a complaint under Section 34 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 against a shop in Kullu and two traders, alleging that one of them (the third accused) had stored prohibited tobacco products meant for human consumption in his possession for sale and distribution to the general public.
On 5 April 2013 the trial court issued process against the accused. On 28 August 2014 the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Mandi, dismissed their application for discharge under Section 258 CrPC, but on 17 September 2021 the Additional Sessions Judge-1, Mandi allowed their revision, set aside the summoning order and quashed the complaint.
The State then filed Cr. Revision No. 252 of 2022 in the High Court. On 13 August 2024, Justice Sandeep Sharma dismissed the revision and left the order of 17 September 2021 undisturbed, finding no illegality or infirmity.
The court held that the very basic ingredients of Section 34 were missing: no prohibited tobacco product was ever recovered from the accused or their business premises, no emergency prohibition notice/order of the Commissioner of Food Safety was shown to have been served, and the complaint rested merely on a cash memo. It relied on Pepsi Foods Ltd. v. Special Judicial Magistrate, (1998) 5 SCC 749, that a summoning order must reflect application of mind.
The names of the accused are recorded only in the internal field below, as required.
What the record says
“However, in the instant case before initiation of complaint, no prohibited tobacco products meant for human consumption were ever recovered from the possession of the accused or from their business premises”
Cr. Revision No. 252 of 2022, order dated 13 August 2024, para 4 — read the full text
No complaining victim
Storing or selling a prohibited tobacco product is a regulatory public-health offence with no individual victim; nobody was harmed, defrauded or coerced, and the State's own officer never even recovered the goods.
What we could not confirm
This is the most recent qualifying tobacco case I could verify, but it is from 2024. More recent HP tobacco action exists only as enforcement drives (e.g. the 2026 COTPA/State-Act drives issuing hundreds of challans and collecting fines) whose official documents I could not open (education.hp.gov.in and himachalpr.gov.in repeatedly timed out), and those drives also targeted sales around schools/to minors, which the register's rules exclude. Many .gov.in and indiankanoon.org pages were unreachable during this research, so a newer official record may exist that I could not confirm.