Issuance Of Faulty Test Result From Accredited Medical Laboratory Not Cheating If There Was No 'Intention To Deceive': Kerala High Court

The Kerala High Court on Wednesday ruled that to attract the offence of cheating, the person making the false representation should have knowledge of the fallacy and yet have proceeded to represent the same to another party with the intention of deceiving them. While partly allowing a petition, Justice Sophy Thomas observed that issuance of a faulty test result from an accredited Medical Laboratory will not amount to cheating if there was no intention to deceive. The question before the Court was whether the issuance of a faulty test result from an accredited Medical Laboratory will amount to cheating. However, in this case, the de facto complainant had no case that the petitioners induced him to give blood for conducting the test and intentionally issued a faulty result in order to cheat him. Moreover, the Court emphasised that the petitioners had merely collected the blood and sent it to a lab for testing: "If at all a faulty result was issued after conducting blood test of the de facto complainant, the test was done by Anderson Lab at Chennai, and the employees, who only collected and sent the sample to Chennai, cannot be held liable for the test result.