Trial court not the first stop for investigation, says Supreme Court | India News

NEW DELHI: SC has barred trial courts from directly entertaining complaints and ordering police to investigate them by ruling that prior to moving court for probing a cognisable offence, a person must approach jurisdictional police for registration of FIR.A bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and S V N Bhatti said, “A magistrate ought not ordinarily entertain an application under Section 156(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) directly unless the informant has availed and exhausted his remedies provided under Section 154 (3) of the code.”Writing the judgment in a cross-case, Justice Mithal said magistrates must ask the informant to first approach the officer-in-charge of the police station and then the superintendent of police. “It is well recognized in law that the person aggrieved must first exhaust the alternative remedies available to him in law before approaching the court of law. In other words, he cannot ordinarily approach the court directly,” he said.The bench did a conjoint reading of sections 154, 156 and 190 of the CrPC and said, “It is crystal clear that an informant who wants to report about a commission of a cognisable offence has to, in the first instance, approach the officer-in-charge of the police station for setting the criminal law into motion by lodging an FIR.”“However, if such information is not accepted by the officer-in-charge of the police station and he refuses to record it, the remedy of the informant is to approach the SP concerned. It is only subsequent to availing the above opportunities that if he is not successful, he may approach the magistrate under section 156(3) of the CrPC for necessary action or of taking cognisance in accordance with section 190 of the CrPC,” the bench said.SC said if the information about a cognisable offence is not being recorded by the officer-in-charge of the police station or even by the SP, then the person aggrieved or the informant “may move the court the magistrate concerned to get the FIR registered and lodged with the concerned police station.”