Supreme Court: Magistrate Can Direct Registration Of FIR U/s. 156(3) CrPC Even If Informant Has Not Exhausted Remedies

The Apex Court was considering Special Leave Petitions challenging the judgment whereby the petitions seeking quashing of the order of the Metropolitan Magistrate, New Delhi, as well as the criminal proceedings, were dismissed.

The Division Bench comprising Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice S.V.N. Bhatti held, “To sum up, the Magistrate ought not to ordinarily entertain an application under Section 156(3) CrPC directly unless the informant has availed and exhausted his remedies provided under Section 154(3) CrPC, but as the Magistrate is otherwise competent under Section 156(3) CrPC to direct the registration of an FIR if the allegations in the application/complaint discloses the commission of a cognizable offence, we are of the opinion that the order so passed by the Magistrate would not be without jurisdiction and would not stand vitiated on this count.”

“Therefore, if an FIR has not been registered for any reason at the police station and the Magistrate is satisfied that the information discloses a cognizable offence, he can certainly direct for its registration obviously on compliance of the provisions of Section 154(3) of the CrPC. This is exactly what has been done by the Magistrate by way of his order dated 01.07.2005 though ignoring the remedy under Section 154(3) of the CrPC which, as said earlier, amounts to mere procedural irregularity”, it added.

Senior Advocate Ranjit Kumar represented the Petitioners, while Senior Advocate Jayant Bhushan represented the Respondents.

Factual Background

The complainant, M/s Sunair Hotels Limited, was allotted land at Bangla Sahib Road, New Delhi, for the construction and operation of a hotel. A non-banking finance company, VLS Finance Limited, through its directors and senior officers (accused persons), approached SHL with the desire to join the project as financial consultants. Accordingly, SHL entered into a Memorandum of Understanding but later discovered that the promise of VLS to issue shares at a premium of Rs 100 per share was legally not possible due to the guidelines of the Securities and Exchange Board of India. SHL initiated arbitration proceedings against VLS, alleging that it had not kept its promises. An award was passed, but the same is a subject matter of challenge before the Delhi High Court.

Some time in the year 2000, VLS discovered fraudulent conduct on the part of SHL and filed a complaint. It was alleged that in retaliation for the aforesaid complaints, SHL filed a complaint against the officials of the VLS. An FIR came to be registered under Sections 406, 409, 420, 424 and 122-B IPC on the ground that VLS failed to bring out the public issue of SHL as agreed and VLS played fraud upon SHL. The quashing petitions filed by VLS and its officers were dismissed by the High Court. It was in such circumstances that the SLPs came to be filed before the Apex Court.

Reasoning

On a perusal of the facts of the case, the Bench noted that an application was filed under Section 156(3) of the CrPC wherein the informant had simply stated that an offence under Sections 420, 120-B and 34 of the IPC was committed and that the informant had approached the “police officials” several times but in vain. The application nowhere stated that the informant had ever approached the officer-in-charge of the police station for lodging the FIR following Section 154 of the CrPC or that on refusal to record such information, he had availed the remedy of approaching the Superintendent of Police concerned.

In this case, the informant had neither approached the officer-in-charge of the police station or the Superintendent of Police concerned as contemplated under Sections 154(1) and 154(3) of the CrPC but had directly gone to the Magistrate under Section 156(3) of the CrPC. On this aspect, the Bench said, “In the facts and circumstances of the case, as the informant had directly moved the Magistrate under Section 156(3) of the CrPC without exhausting his statutory remedies, the Magistrate could have avoided taking action on the said application and could have refused to direct for the registration of the FIR. However, as entertaining an application directly by the Magistrate is a mere procedural irregularity and since the Magistrate in a given circumstance is otherwise empowered to pass such an order, the action of the Magistrate may not be illegal or without jurisdiction.”

The Bench found that the Magistrate had not only heard the counsel and perused the documents but had even considered the case law cited and had opined that the information disclosed a cognizable offence. This implied that he had applied his mind to the contents of the application before passing the impugned order directing for the registration of the FIR. Therefore, the Bench found no fault with the order of the High Court in refusing to quash the order of the Magistrate.

It was also stated by the Bench that the High Court had rightly refused to exercise its discretionary jurisdiction so as to interfere with the FIR, as the investigations had been completed and the chargesheets had been filed. On the issue of maintainability of successive FIRs in respect of same cognizable offence, the Bench noted, “ Therefore, agreeing with the view that there can be no second FIR and no fresh investigation on receipt of the subsequent information but as on the basis of the earlier first information, there is no conviction and acquittal, it cannot be said that a second complaint/FIR is not maintainable.” Noting that the allegations were different and even the parties against whom the FIRs were filed were not the same, the Bench refrained from making any final comment on the aspect of maintainability of FIR, as no such finding on this aspect had been returned by the court below.

Thus, noting that the investigations had been completed and the High Court had refused to quash the said FIR in exercise of its discretionary power, the Bench dismissed the petitions and left the matter to proceed further in accordance with law.

Cause Title: Anurag Bhatnagar & Anr. v. State (Nct of Delhi) & Anr. (Neutral Citation: 2025 INSC 895)

Appearance

Petitioner: Senior Advocates Ranjit Kumar, Shoeb Alam, S.S.Ray, Garima Prashad, Advocates Ashok Sharma, Bharat Chugh, Vaibhav Gulia, Jai Allagh, AOR Rakhi Ray

Respondent: Senior Advocates Jayant Bhushan, Sidhartha Dave, Advocates Gurpreet Singh, Jatin S Sethi, Parv K Garg, Mohd. Osama, Mohammad Farman Ashraf, Abdul Ahad, AOR Akbar Siddique, Advocates Rajat Nair, Sharath Narayan Nambiar, Indira Bhakar, Vinayak Sharma,Vatsal Joshi,Anuj Srinivas Udupa, Chitransh Sharma, Satvika Thakur,Yogya Rajpurohit, Aayush Saklani, Nitika Capoor, Subramaniam, AOR Mukesh Kumar Maroria

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