The main legal point established in the judgment is the applicability of Section 156(3) of Cr.P.C. for seeking directions for a fair investigation in a criminal case.

JUDGMENT :

Vishal Mishra, J.

1. Heard the learned counsel for the parties.

2. This petition under Section 482 of Cr.P.C. has been filed seeking directions for respondent No. 2 and 3 to conduct fair investigation in Crime No. 779/2020 registered at Police Station Ambah, District Morena for the offences punishable under Sections 336, 294, 323, 506 and 34 of IPC.

3. It is submitted that in spite of receiving written complaint/application made by the petitioner, the Police authorities are not taking any action, therefore, the present petition has been preferred for direction to the Police authorities to take appropriate action.

4. This issue is no more res integra and the issue has been decided by a Division Bench at the Principal Seat Jabalpur in Writ Appeal No. 709/2016 vide order dated 13.10.2016 by which the appeal has been dismissed with liberty to the appellant to take recourse by approaching the competent Court of criminal jurisdiction by filing a private complaint and similar view has been taken by the principal seat at Jabalpur in WA. No. 658/2017 vide order dated 08/08/2017 following the judgment of coordinate Bench of this Court in the case of Shweta Bhadoriya, Vs. State of M.P. & others 2017 (1) MPLJ (Cri) 338).

5. In another case, the coordinate Bench of this Court in Writ Petition No. 8569/2015 had dismissed the writ petition vide order dated 04.11.2016 holding that the writ petition is not maintainable.

6. Further the Hon'ble Supreme Court vide order dated 20.03.2020 in the case of M. Subramaniam and Another Vs. S. Janaki and Another, (Criminal Appeal No. 102/2011) has considered the judgments passed in the case of Sakiri Basu Vs. State of U.P and Others reported in AIR 2008 SC 907 and in case of Sudhir Bhaskar Rao Tambe Vs. Hemant Yashwant Dhage and Others reported in 2016 (6) SCC 277. The operative portion whereof is reproduced below for ready reference:-

5. While it is not possible to accept the contention of the appellants on the question of locus standi, we are inclined to accept the contention that the High Court could not have directed the registration of an FIR with a direction to the police to investigate and file the final report in view of the judgment of this Court in Sakiri Vasu v. State Of Uttar Pradesh And Others, (2008) 2 SCC 409 in which it has been inter alia held as under:

"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 CrPC, then he can approach the Superintendent of Police under Section 154(3) CrPC 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) CrPC 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. Afaq Jahan this Court observed: (SCC p. 631, para 11)

"11. 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 i