Chandigarh, Feb. 10 -- The Punjab and Haryana high court has quashed a first information report (FIR) registered against AAP legislator from Sanour, Harmeet Singh Pathanmajra, along with all subsequent proceedings, including the summoning order dated April 13, 2023. He was accused of furnishing false information in his election affidavit. The FIR had been filed under Sections 193 and 199 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 125A of the Representation of the People Act at Julkan police station, Patiala, in 2022. A Patiala court had earlier declared Pathanmajra a proclaimed offender (PO) in a separate rape case. He is currently in Adelaide, Australia. The FIR in the false affidavit case was registered on February 10, 2022, based on a complaint addressed to the nodal officer-cum-DSP (rural), Patiala, by the returning officer of the Sanour constituency, from where Pathanmajra was contesting the assembly elections as an AAP candidate. The complaint alleged that the petitioner had submitted false information in Form 26 (affidavit) along with his nomination papers, stating that no criminal case was pending against him and that he had not been convicted in any criminal case. However, documents obtained from the office of the SSP, Patiala, indicated that criminal cases were pending against him and that a Barnala court had declared him a proclaimed offender in July 2019. While the police initially filed a cancellation report, stating that the alleged offences were non-cognisable and could not be investigated without a magistrate's order under Section 155 of the CrPC, the chief judicial magistrate (CJM), Patiala, on April 13, 2023, treated it as a complaint and summoned the petitioner. Advocate Sunny Saggar, representing the petitioner, argued that the FIR could not be registered because the offences were non-cognisable and there was no magistrate order authorising the investigation. Further, once a cancellation report had been submitted, the magistrate could not have treated the complaint as a complaint case, as registration of the FIR itself violated statutory procedure. The state counsel, however, contended that the magistrate had rightly treated it as a complaint case. Justice Tribhuvan Dahiya observed in his order, passed on January 29, that the lodging of the FIR as well as the investigation carried out was without jurisdiction. He further noted that the CJM could not have taken cognisance of the returning officer's complaint, which was addressed to the DSP and not to the magistrate....