Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh (2013)

Every question on the First Information Report turns on one thing: is registration a duty or a discretion? A student who says only that the officer in charge "shall" record information about a cognizable offence has quoted the section without answering the practical question that the examiner is testing — whether the officer may first satisfy himself that the complaint is true.

Lalita Kumari settles that question, and it settles it in a form that is easy to carry into an answer: a rule, plus a closed set of exceptions, plus a timetable. The Sanhita has since written a limited preliminary enquiry into the statute itself — s. 173(3) permits an enquiry of up to fourteen days, with the permission of an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police, for offences punishable with three years or more but less than seven years — so the decision is now read with, and partly absorbed into, the section.

The question came to the Court as a general one about police practice under s. 154 of the 1973 Code, not as a dispute about a particular incident. The issue formulated was whether a police officer is bound to register a First Information Report on receiving any information relating to the commission of a cognizable offence, or whether he has power to conduct a preliminary inquiry to test the veracity of that information before registering it.

The Court held that the police must compulsorily register the FIR on receiving a complaint if the information discloses a cognizable offence, and that no preliminary inquiry is permissible in such a situation.

Where the information does not disclose a cognizable offence but indicates the necessity for an inquiry, a preliminary inquiry may be conducted, and only to ascertain whether a cognizable offence is disclosed or not.

Where a preliminary inquiry ends in the closing of the complaint, a copy of the entry of that closure must be supplied to the first informant forthwith and not later than one week, and it must disclose in brief the reasons for closing the complaint and not proceeding further.

The Court declined to make an exhaustive list of the cases in which a preliminary inquiry may be made, saying that this depends on the facts and circumstances of each case, but it gave illustrations: matrimonial and family disputes; commercial offences; medical negligence cases; corruption cases; and cases where there is abnormal delay or laches in initiating a criminal prosecution — for example, a delay of over three months in reporting the matter without a satisfactory explanation.

The method is a two-stage reading of the section. Stage one asks a question about the information, not about the informant and not about the truth of the allegation: does what has been told to the officer disclose a cognizable offence? If it does, the statutory command operates and nothing is left to the officer's judgment. Stage two arises only when the answer at stage one is uncertain, and the inquiry permitted there is strictly instrumental — it may go to the question whether a cognizable offence is disclosed, and no further. Credibility, motive and the eventual prospects of the prosecution belong to the investigation, which registration begins; they are not conditions of registration.

The closure safeguards follow from the same logic. If the officer may decline to register, the informant must be told, in writing, within a week, and with reasons — otherwise the discretion at stage two would silently swallow the duty at stage one.

This is the leading authority for the compulsory character of registration under BNSS s. 173 (CrPC s. 154), and it is the natural opening for any question on the FIR, on the remedies for refusal to register, or on zero FIR.

It disposes of the argument that an officer may verify a complaint before recording it. It does not decide that an FIR may never be tested — the categories of preliminary inquiry are expressly preserved — and it does not decide anything about the quality of the investigation that follows or about the evidentiary value of the FIR itself.

Say plainly that the decision was given on the 1973 Code and that the governing section is now BNSS s. 173, whose sub-section (3) now provides its own statutory preliminary enquiry for the three-to-seven-year band. An answer that states the Lalita Kumari rule without that qualification is describing the law as it stood before 1 July 2024.