Mumbai: Bombay high court has quashed a first information report (FIR) registered by Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) police in Jan against the owners of 31 super-luxury cars for assembling outside a mall and allegedly violating an order prohibiting unlawful assembly of five or more on the eve of Republic Day.They had merely gathered near a place of amusement and “by no stretch of imagination” can it be said that they were causing any obstruction, annoyance or danger to human life, observed the bench of Justices P D Naik and N R Borkar in the April 1 order. It would be an abuse of power to proceed with the FIR, said the order made available on Monday.Citing a Supreme Court judgment, the HC bench observed, “Disobedience of an order promulgated by a public servant lawfully empowered will not be an offence unless such disobedience leads to consequences” of obstruction, danger, or riot as enumerated under provisions of IPC Section 188.Parag Rajda, Sahil Contractor, Darshan Mehta, Rohit Chuganee and others had filed four different petitions for quashing of the Jan 26 FIR. Senior counsel Aabad Ponda and counsel Sudatta Patil, representing the car owners, said police unlawfully and in an arbitrary and high-handed manner seized 40 vehicles in an “abuse of power”. Ponda said no case was made out by police against the petitioners.Damandip Chaddha had organised an event at the Jio World Drive in BKC where luxury cars were to be displayed. Some of the petitioners had paid to attend the commercial event at the mall’s south deck and others had complimentary invites.One of the prosecutors, Rutuja Ambekar, said the police commissioner had issued a prohibitory order from Jan 23 to Feb 6, which was violated and the event organiser told a patrolling police personnel at 5.30am that the car owners were to take part in a rally to Atal Setu and back to BKC.There was no promulgation of prohibitory order and it wasn’t available on Mumbai Police website too, argued Ponda. Any such order in any case intends to avoid breach of public peace, he said. The car owners breached no peace, HC also noted.IPC Section 188 attracts up to one month in prison, any one who knows about the prohibitory order and disobeys it, and up to six months’ jail if such disobedience causes danger to human life or causes a riot. HC said, “None of the ingredients which constitutes the offence under Section 188 are made out in FIR.”Noting that under Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), HC can quash an FIR, if found continuing investigation or prosecution is an abuse of process of law. In this case, it would be abuse of law to proceed with FIR, said HC, and set it aside.