Karnataka High Court: While passing the order in a criminal petition filed under Section 482 CrPC praying to quash the proceedings in the investigation in a criminal case, a Single Judge Bench of K.N. Phaneendra,J. held that direction of investigation under Section 156(3) warrants application of judicial mind. Litigant cannot at his own whim invoke authority of the Magistrate.
The complainant had filed a complaint in 2015 and sought for referring the complaint to police investigation in 2016. But the said request was not supported by any affidavit.
The question for consideration before the Court was that, whether the order referring the private complaint under S. 156(3) CrPC for investigation to jurisdictional police without being supported by an affidavit is bad?
The Court after hearing the learned counsel for the petitioner and the respondent held that, applications under 156(3) of CrPC are to be supported by an affidavit duly sworn to by the applicant invoking the jurisdiction of the Magistrate. Admittedly, in this case, such an affidavit was not filed along with the application and therefore the order passed by the learned Magistrate was held to be bad. Accordingly, the petition was allowed and the order passed by the Magistrate was set aside. [Ganesh Krishnan v. Ramesh Nanjund Shastri, Criminal Petition No. 7034/2015, order dated June 02, 2017]
