Observing that different High Courts had held earlier that ‘forest officials are not police officers within the meaning of the Criminal Procedure Code’, Justice J. Sreenivas Rao of Telangana High Court quashed sections of Indian Penal Code invoked in a Preliminary Offence Report issued by Amrabad Division Forest official over an alleged attack on their personnel nearly four years ago. The Judge, however, said the forest officials were at liberty to seek remedies in accordance with law about the penal sections if they were aggrieved. According to Raheem, six persons in an inebriated condition attacked him when he stopped them at Dhurvasula check-post base camp near Mannanur coming under Wild Life Protection Conservation zone. On his complaint, the Forest department higher officials prepared a preliminary offence report invoking sections of IPC and the Wild Life Act. The judge, citing verdicts of different HCs, held that forest officials invoking IPC sections would amount to abuse of the process of law since they lacked that jurisdiction.