The Supreme Court has referred to a five-judge Constitution Bench the question whether the police are duty-bound to register a First Information Report on receipt of a complaint or information of commission of a cognisable offence or there is discretion on their part to order a preliminary probe before that exercise.
A Bench of Justices Dalveeer Bhandari, T.S. Thakur and Dipak Misra referred to Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia a writ petition which raised the important issue: whether it is imperative on the part of the officer in-charge of a police station to register a case under Section 154 of the Code of Criminal Procedure 1973 or whether he or she has the option or latitude of conducting some sort of preliminary enquiry before registering it. Writing the order, Justice Bhandari said: “We have carefully analysed various judgments delivered by this court in the last several decades. We clearly discern divergent judicial opinions on the main issue.”
The Bench said: “This court also carved out a special category… in the cases of Santosh Kumar and Dr. Suresh Gupta where a preliminary enquiry had been postulated before registering an FIR.”
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Counsel for some States also submitted that the CBI Manual “envisages some kind of preliminary enquiry before registering the FIR,” the Bench said. “In view of the divergent opinions in a large number of cases decided by this court, it has become extremely important to have a clear enunciation of law and adjudication by a larger Bench for the benefit of all concerned — the courts, the investigating agencies and the citizens.”