Excise prosecution cannot survive once the underlying duty demand is set aside and the complaint loses its legal foundation.

A criminal complaint under the Central Excise Act could not continue after the Supreme Court set aside the underlying duty demands and exonerated the assessee. The prosecution was founded entirely on the departmental adjudication confirming differential duty and penalty, so once that foundation was annulled, no surviving contravention remained to support the complaint. The Court treated continued prosecution as unwarranted and oppressive, and quashed the complaint as an abuse of process because the criminal case had lost its legal basis.

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Issues: Whether the criminal complaint under the Central Excise Act could continue after the Supreme Court had set aside the underlying excise duty demands and exonerated the assessee, or whether such continuation would amount to abuse of process of Court.

Analysis: The complaint was founded on the departmental adjudication order confirming differential duty and penalty for alleged offences under Sections 9 and 9AA of the Central Excise Act, 1944. The final judgment of the Supreme Court set aside the demands raised against the petitioner, thereby removing the very basis of the prosecution. Once the foundation of the complaint stood annulled, no surviving demand or contravention remained to sustain the criminal proceeding. In these circumstances, the continuation of the prosecution was held to be unwarranted and oppressive.

Conclusion: The complaint proceeding was quashed as the prosecution could not survive after the underlying excise demands had been set aside.

Ratio Decidendi: Where criminal prosecution under the excise law rests entirely on an adjudication that has been finally set aside, the prosecution loses its legal foundation and is liable to be quashed as an abuse of process.

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