Procedure for submitting a report for cancellation of FIR to a Magistrate, empowered to take cognizance of the offence on a police report and to try the accused or send him for trial.

 Rule 24.7 of Police Rules, 1934 Vol.III, Chapter XXIV prescribes the procedure for submitting a report for cancellation of FIR to a Magistrate, empowered to take cognizance of the offence on a police report and to try the accused or send him for trial.

Bare reading of the above mentioned provision, clearly depicts that the situations, where a move for cancellation of a registered case can be made are:-

a. Information is maliciously false,

b. false owing to mistake of law,

c. false owing to mistake of fact

d. offence reported is found to be non-cognizable

e. matter fit for a civil suit

While exercising power under section 173(3), Cr.P.C, the Magistrate is not to act as pawns, in the hands of the police and pass mechanical orders, without application of his conscious mind to the facts and the material, placed before him. The Magistrate must realize that the power to cancel a police case is of wide amplitude, which has the effect of bringing to halt a criminal prosecution, which otherwise would entail a detailed process. Such a power, therefore, by its very nature, cannot be designed to be exercised on mere “ipsi dixit” of the police. Otherwise, the very purpose for conferring this power to the Magistrate on responsible level, in supervisory capacity would stand defeated. The Magistrate while acting fairly, justly, honestly and applying his mind to the material before him and duly considering all the aspects of the matter should pass a speaking and well-reasoned order, rather putting his signatures in an unjustified manners, whichever is placed before him by the police. His order should indicate as how and on the basis of which material, he finds himself in agreement with the cancellation report. Any order passed in a mechanical manner, without indicating independent application of mind, is deprecated.

Furthermore, the Punjab Police Rules, 1934 as highlighted above, prescribe a criteria for making a cancellation report by the police and dealing with it, by a Magistrate. Therefore, the learned Magistrate should have also seen whether strict compliance of the said rules has been made by the police or otherwise.

Writ Petition No. 3119 of 2020
Irfan Akbar Khan Versus The State, etc.