The High Court should refrain from direct interference in police investigations and encourage petitioners to seek redress through formal statutory remedies under the Criminal Procedure Code.

JUDGMENT

Jasjit Singh Bedi, J.

The prayer in the present petition under Section 482 Cr.P.C. is for the issuance of necessary directions to the official respondents to take legal action on applications dated 04.09.2023 (Annexure P-4), 06.09.2023 (Annexure P-5) and 21.09.2023 (Annexures P-6 and P-7) which had been moved against the private respondents seeking registration of an FIR and for grant of protection.

2. The learned counsel for the petitioner states that all the private respondents had committed a fraud upon the petitioner. The petitioner had raised construction for the respondents but the respondents had not paid a sum of Rs.1.4 crores to him and had forcibly retained his entire machinery and shuttering articles which were required to be recovered and his payment of Rs.1.4 crores was also to be recovered. Therefore, the offence was made out for which an FIR ought to have been registered on the basis of the representations moved by the petitioner. Reliance is placed on the judgment in the case of Lalita Kumari v. State of UP and others, (SC) 2014(1) SCC (Crl.) 524.

3. I have heard the counsel for the petitioner.

4. The Hon'ble Supreme Court has dealt with the issues of the power to order the registration of an FIR, transfer investigations, to supervise the same and other allied issues in a number of judgments. Some of them are enumerated hereinbelow:-

In "Sakiri Vasu v. State of U.P. and others, 2008 (1) RCR (Criminal) 392", the Hon'ble Supreme Court has held as under:-

"10. It has been held by this Court in CBI and another v. Rajesh Gandhi and another 1997 CriLJ 63 (vide para 8) that no one can insist that an offence be investigated by a particular agency. We fully agree with the view in the aforesaid decision. An aggrieved person can only claim that the offence he alleges be investigated properly, but he has no right to claim that it be investigated by any particular agency of his choice.

11. In this connection we would like to state that if a person has a grievance that the police station is not registering his FIR under Section 154 Cr.P.C., then he can approach the Superintendent of Police under Section 154(3) Cr.P.C. by an application in writing. Even if that does not yield any satisfactory result in the sense that either the FIR is still not registered, or that even after registering it no proper investigation is held, it is open to the aggrieved person to file an application under Section 156(3) Cr.P.C . before the learned Magistrate concerned. If such an application under Section 156 (3) is filed before the Magistrate, the Magistrate can direct the FIR to be registered and also can direct a proper investigation to be made, in a case where, according to the aggrieved person, no proper investigation was made. The Magistrate can also under the same provision monitor the investigation to ensure a proper investigation.

12. Thus in Mohd. Yousuf v. Smt. Afaq Jahan and Anr. JT 2006(1) SC 10, this Court observed:

The clear position therefore is that any judicial Magistrate, before taking cognizance of the offence, can order investigation under Section 156(3) of the Code. If he does so, he is not to examine the complainant on oath because he was not taking cognizance of any offence therein. For the purpose of enabling the police to start investigation it is open to the Magistrate to direct the police to register an FIR. There is nothing illegal in doing so. After all registration of an FIR involves only the process of entering the substance of the information relating to the commission of the cognizable offence in a book kept by the officer in charge of the police station as indicated in Section 15