The main legal point established in the judgment is that a Magistrate's power under S.156(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure is limited to directing the officer in charge of a police station to conduct an investigation, and does not extend to directing the CBI to conduct investigations in non-cognizable cases.

1. Has a Magistrate power to direct the Central Bureau of Investigation to conduct investigation to conduct investigation into any offence? Thus question, seemingly ingenuous, has become compounded with divergent verdicts pronounced by different High Courts. When the High Courts of Rajasthan and Delhi answered the question in the affirmative, the High Courts of Gujarat and Karnataka have answered it in the negative. These appeals are filed at the instance of the Central Bureau of Investigation (for short 'CBI') in challenge of the judgments of the High Courts of Rajasthan and Delhi by which the orders passed by certain Magistrates were upheld.

2. It is not necessary to narrate the facts in each case. The common feature in all the appeals is, when a complaint was filed before a Magistrate alleging serious offences, he ordered investigation to be conducted by the C.B.I. and on completion of the investigation final report was required to be filed. We may now mention what happened thereafter to one of the cases before us. The CBI challenged the order of the Magistrate before the High Court of Delhi contending that the Magistrate has no jurisdiction to order the CBI to conduct the investigation, at least without obtaining consent of the State Government concerned as required under S.6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, 1946, ('Delhi Act' for short). The CBI sought support for the said contention from some of the earlier decisions rendered by Single Judge of the Delhi High Court. When the matter was placed before a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, a contrary view was taken and the Bench held that the Magistrate has the power to do so. The Division Bench of the Delhi High Court, in reaching the said view, has mainly relied on the observations made by this Court in State of West Bengal & Ors. v. Sampat Lal & Ors. (1985 (1) SCC 317). Learned judges highlighted the following observation contained in Sampatlal :

"In our considered opinion, S.6 of the Delhi Act does not apply when the Court gives a direction to the CBI to conduct an investigation and Counsel for the parties rightly did not dispute this position. In this view, the impugned order of the learned Single Judge and the appellate decision of the Division Bench appointing DIG of CBI to inquire into the matter would not be open to attack for want of sanction under S.6 of the Delhi Act".

3. Learned Judges gave emphasis to the words "when the Court gives a direction to the C.B.I. to conduct an investigation". The Division Bench of the High Court took it for granted that what this Court meant by the word "court" as used in the said observation in Sampat Lal should be understood as any court. The Division Bench declined to accept the view of the Karnataka High Court (in one of the decisions) that what the Supreme Court meant in Sampat Lal's case is the High Court and not any court.

4. It is necessary for us to resolve the controversy fomented up with the expression "court" in Sampat Lal because the question whether a Magistrate has the power to direct the C.B.I. to conduct the investigation was not the issue involved in Sampat Lal at all. The fact situation in Sampat Lal was centered on the direction issued by the High Court. That apart, it is not advisable to read more than what is contained in a judgment.

5. For deciding the present question we may refer to the powers of the Magistrate in ordering investigation. There are three provisions in the Code of Criminal Procedure (for short "the Code") by which a Magistrate can order investigation to be conducted. They are S.155,156 and 202 of the Code. Among them S.155 concerns only with the investigation into non-cognizable offences whereas S.202 only enables a Magistrate to have the assistance of an investigation conducted either by the police or by any other person, for the limited purpose of deciding whether or not there is sufficient ground for proceeding with the complaint. Hence, we need not vex our mind wi