Judicial Magistrate must treat a protest petition as a private complaint under procedural laws.

1. The petitioner is resident of Thiruvarur. On 15/09/2009 at 8.45 p.m. he left for Tirupathi to pray for worship. When he was at Tirupathi at 7.30 hours on 17/02/2009 he received a telephone message from his friend Anand that his house was broken and things were theft after breaking wooden bureaus and dresses and books were spread disorderly. Hence the petitioner cut shorted his trip and immediately came to his house. The petitioner along with their C. Balamurugan of New Street and M. Vedarathinam of his neighbour entered into the house and seen the situation. All the doors were kept broken. After thorough verification they found that Rs.5000/- cash, a pair of pooja lamp, a silver pooja lamp, a silver kamatchi pooja lamp, 1 1/2 sourverign of gold bangle, othavada gold chain weighing 3 souverigns were looted from the house. Taking advantage of his absence some burglars had broken the house and taken the above properties. They lodged a complaint with the respondent on 18/02/2009. A FIR was filed in Cr. No. 100/2009 under S.457, S.380 IPC. The police persons enquired the case.

2. There was no proper action on the complaint. Hence, the petitioner filed a petition before this Court for direction in Crl. OP No. 17157/2010. On 27/07/2010, the High Court Madras heard both sides and the Government Advocate had given undertaking that the respondent would file the final report within a period of three months. Therefore, this Court passed an order directing the respondent to file final report within a period of three months.

3. The petitioner then and there approached the respondent Police. Since the police was delaying to file charge - sheet, he filed a Contempt Petition bearing No. 1951/2011 before this Court. This Court passed an order on 03/08/2010 directing the Public Prosecutor to take notice and to file final report.

4. In order to escape from the contempt proceedings, the respondent immediately, filed a final report treating the complaint as "undetectable". The respondent neither examined the petitioner and other witnesses nor recorded their statements. Categorically narrating the above said facts, the petitioner filed a Protest Petition before the Court below to order further investigation by any other Police agency.

5. The learned Judicial Magistrate, Thiruvarur on 14/08/2012 without taking any protest petition on file, proceeded to dismiss the same in the following lines:
"Objections raised by de facto complainant recorded. Final report filed by respondent / police is accepted and case closed on undetectable with liberty to reopen the case as and when required. Further liberty given to de facto complainant to file private complaint if required."
The above said order is under challenge before this Court.

6. The learned counsel appearing for the petitioner would contend that the Court below has erroneously dismissed the protest petition without observing the settled procedures that the duty of the Magistrate is to take the protest petition on file by treating it as private complaint and to proceed with the procedure laid down in the Code of Criminal Procedure as if it is a private complaint and that the petitioner's rights are very much curtailed by the order challenged before this Court.

7. The learned Government Advocate (Crl. Side) argued in vehemence would submit that there is no flaw in the Order challenged before the Court, that as per the report of the Investigating Officer, the Court below has acted upon and that no valid ground has been made out to interfere with the order passed by the Court below.

8. The learned counsel for the petitioner in support of his contention placed much reliance upon two decisions of the Supreme Court. In 2006 (7) SCC 296 [ Popu