LAW ON REGISTRATION OF FIRST INFORMATION REPORT IN COGNIZABLE CASES (Pages 70-83) by Advocate Dr. Rajender Goyal in THE INTERNATIONAL MANAGER / ISSN: 2348-9413 (Online); 2348-9405 (Print)

The cases of Justice Asok Ganguli, Retired Judge of Hon’ble Supreme Court of India and Mr Tarun Tejpal, Editor-in Chief of Tahalka Magazine have brought to the forefront the issue of power and duty of the Police offices to register First Information Report (FIR) in cognizable cases. Goa police in Tarun Tejpal’s case straightaway suo moto registered the FIR with all promptitudes even without first recording the version of the victim in that case. On the contrary in Justice Asok Ganguli’s case, police seems to be dithering notwithstanding his prima facie indictment by a three member committee of the Supreme Court of India. The purpose of this study is to find out whether under Section 154 of the Code of Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 a police officer is bound to register a FIR forthwith whenever he receives information or otherwise comes to know regarding the commission of a cognizable offence or he (police officer) has an option, discretion or latitude of conducting some kind of preliminary enquiry before registering the FIR? The purpose of the study is also to cull out the perspective of Superior Courts in India as discernible from various judicial pronouncements on this score. The study shows that exceptions apart, registration of FIR is mandatory under Section 154 of the Code, if the information discloses commission of a cognizable offence and no preliminary inquiry is permissible in such a situation, and, if the information received does not disclose a cognizable offence but indicates the necessity for an inquiry, a preliminary inquiry may be conducted only to ascertain whether cognizable offence is disclosed or not. The Code of 1973 contemplates two kinds of FIRs. The duly signed FIR under Section 154(1) is by the informant to the concerned officer at the police station. The second kind of FIR could be which is registered by the police itself on any information received or other than by way of an informant [Section 157(1)] and even this information has to be duly recorded and the copy should be sent to the Magistrate forthwith. Furthermore, the police is duty bound to proceed to conduct investigation into a cognizable offence even without receiving information (i.e. FIR) about commission of such an offence, if the officer in charge of the police station otherwise suspects the commission of such an offence. Keywords: Cognizable cases, Police, Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, First Information Report, Supreme Court