Magistrate Becomes 'Functus Officio' After Order On Final Report, Can't Pass Separate Order On Protest Petition: Rajasthan High Court

The Rajasthan High Court has held that once Magistrate Court passes an order on a Negative Final Report, it becomes functus officio and cannot pass a second order on a protest petition later on. 

The bench of Justice Anoop Kumar Dhand held:

"...whenever a Final Report (FR) Negative is submitted by the police in the Court, the Magistrate has to issue notice to the complainant informant. After receipt of the notice if the complainant appears and does not file a protest petition, then the Magistrate can hear the arguments of both sides and he would either accept the FR if no case is found to be made out or reject the FR and take cognizance against the accused if prima facie any case is made out against him.

But if protest petition is submitted by the complainant and evidence is produced in this regard, then after considering the FR along with the protest petition and the evidence of the witnesses, the Court has three options, either to accept FR or reject the FR and take cognizance against the accused or send the matter for further investigation. 

At this stage, the Court is not supposed to pass two different orders i.e., accept or reject the FR and then proceed with the protest petition, record the evidence, if any led by the complainant/victim and then either reject or accept the protest petition and take cognizance. At this stage two different orders are not supposed to be passed. If one order is passed on FR then the Court of Magistrate becomes “functus officio” then it cannot pass second order on the protest petition. A common order is required to be passed at this stage". 

For context, the Court was hearing challenge against order in a criminal revision petition that set aside order of the Magistrate in a rape FIR filed against the petitioner. The Magistrate had accepted the final negative final report filed by the police, and had rejected the protest petition by the complainant-respondent.

The FIR was lodged against the petitioner with the allegations of rape under the false promise of marriage. Police submitted final negative report in favour of the petitioner, against which a protest petition was filed by the complainant. The Magistrate accepted the final report, and rejected the protest petition.

Magistrate's order was challenged by the complainant in a criminal revision petition that was allowed. Hence, present petition was filed.

It was the case of the petitioner that the complainant was in the habit of lodging similar kind of FIRs against people across nation, and had filed 16 such complaints before. It was submitted that most of these proceedings were either quashed or resulted in acquittals.

The criminal revision petition was allowed by the court based on the view that the Magistrate should have passed two separate orders, one on the final negative report, and other on the protest petition.

It was the view of the revisional court that where final negative report was submitted by the police, followed by a protest petition, Magistrate should pass order on Final report first. Then after conducting an inquiry under Section 200 and 202, CrPC, order was required to be passed based on conclusion of that inquiry. However, presently, a common order was passed.

After hearing the contentions, the Court rejected the opinion of the revisional court.

Accordingly, while making reference to Supreme Court decisions, the Court held that the revisional court erred in making the observations, and the procedure suggested by the court was foreign to CrPC.

Hence, the order passed by the revisional court was set aside, for being legally unsustainable, and matter was remitted for fresh orders.

Title: Devesh Sharma v State of Rajasthan & Anr.

Citation: 2026 LiveLaw (Raj) 190

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