Supreme Court holds that magistrates cannot direct FIR registration without examining the complaint on merits
A two-judge bench has held that the power under Section 175(3) of the BNSS to direct police to register an FIR cannot be exercised mechanically — the magistrate must record satisfaction that a cognizable offence is disclosed.
The Supreme Court has held that a magistrate exercising power under Section 175(3) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS) to direct registration of an FIR cannot do so without first examining whether the complaint discloses a cognizable offence. A division bench observed that orders mechanically directing FIR registration without any application of mind are an abuse of the magistrate's jurisdiction and stand vitiated.
The judgment, delivered on 8 May 2026, came on appeal from a Delhi High Court order that had refused to interfere with a Section 175(3) direction passed by a metropolitan magistrate without recorded reasons.
The order under challenge
The appellant, the proprietor of a textile firm, had been summoned by the police pursuant to an FIR registered on the direction of a metropolitan magistrate at Karkardooma. The original complaint had been filed by a former employee alleging cheating and breach of trust over disputed pay. The magistrate's order under Section 175(3) ran to four lines: it noted that the complainant had approached the police, that no FIR had been registered, and directed the SHO to register an FIR forthwith and report compliance.
The High Court declined to quash either the order or the FIR, holding that the magistrate's discretion under Section 175(3) was a wide one and that the petitioner had an alternative remedy under Section 528 BNSS [Section 482 CrPC]. The appeal to the Supreme Court was on a narrower ground: whether a Section 175(3) direction can be passed without any reasons recorded on the face of the order.
The Court's reasoning
Justice Rajiv Khanna, writing for the bench, returned to first principles. Section 175(3) BNSS, the bench held, is the successor provision to Section 156(3) CrPC and carries forward the same conceptual structure. The magistrate is not the arm of the police; the direction is a judicial function. A judicial function performed without recorded reasons is, in the words of the order, “an order in name only.”
The bench drew on Anil Kumar v. M.K. Aiyappa (2013), in which the Court had earlier held that a Section 156(3) direction must reflect application of mind. The principle, the bench held, applies a fortiori to Section 175(3) BNSS, which the legislature drafted with the benefit of two decades of jurisprudence on the predecessor provision. Where the statute requires the magistrate to be “satisfied” that a cognizable offence is disclosed, the order must show that satisfaction.
The bench was careful to distinguish two categories of complaint. Where the offence is grave and the facts are stark — a complaint of murder, of dowry death, of rape — a brief order may suffice; the gravity speaks for itself. Where the offence alleged is minor or where the dispute is materially commercial or matrimonial, the magistrate must engage with the complaint and record what it is that satisfies the test of cognizable offence. The complaint in the present case fell into the second category.
Implications for the lower judiciary
The judgment disposes of a recurring question. Section 175(3) directions are routine in metropolitan magistrate courts; one count places them at over 30 per cent of the complaints filed under the corresponding CrPC provision in pre-2024 years. The Court's clarification will require magistrates to record reasons of substance, however briefly, on the face of every direction. The bench expressly declined to lay down a template — what suffices in one case, the order observes, may be inadequate in another — but the floor is now raised: there must be reasons, and the reasons must speak to the cognizable-offence test.
The bench also addressed, in a brief paragraph, the relationship between Section 175(3) directions and the principles in Lalita Kumari v. Government of UP (2014). Lalita Kumari, the Court reiterated, governs the police's obligation to register an FIR when information of a cognizable offence is received directly. Section 175(3) governs the magistrate's power to direct registration when the police have not. The two operate in different domains; neither displaces the other.
Outcome
The appeal was allowed. The order of the metropolitan magistrate at Karkardooma directing FIR registration was set aside. The complaint stands relegated to the magistrate for fresh consideration, on a reasoned order, within four weeks. The FIR registered on the basis of the original direction is quashed; investigation, the Court observed, may resume only on a fresh order if one is passed.