Two police reports said opposite things. The judge had to read both — but didn't.

Police filed a charge sheet. Then they filed a second report saying 'drop the case.' The magistrate picked one. The Supreme Court said: that's not how it works.

In a small courtroom in Alappuzha, Kerala, a magistrate had two police reports on his desk. One said three men committed crimes — obscenity, hurt, hurt with weapons. The other, from the Crime Branch, said no offence happened at all. The magistrate chose the second report, dropped the case, and never mentioned the first one in his order. It took four years and three courts to correct that single omission.

The question the Supreme Court had to answer was deceptively simple: when the police file two contradictory reports, can a magistrate simply pick one and ignore the other?

When the first report said 'guilty'

On February 3, 2016, the Alappuzha North Police Station registered FIR 205/2016 against three men. The First Information Report (a written complaint that starts a police investigation) alleged offences under four sections of the Indian Penal Code: Section 294(b) (obscene acts and songs), Section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), Section 324 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons), and Section 34 (common intention — meaning the acts were done together with a shared plan).

The police investigated. On September 26, 2016, they filed a charge sheet under Section 173(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (the standard report filed when the police complete an investigation and believe an offence is made out). That report implicated all three accused. The case was now before the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court-I in Alappuzha.

But the first accused was not satisfied. He complained to senior police officers that the case against him was false. The Crime Branch took over and conducted a further investigation.

When the second report said 'innocent'

On December 6, 2017, the Crime Branch filed a supplementary report under Section 173(8) CrPC (a report submitted when the police conduct further investigation after the initial charge sheet). This second report recommended that the proceedings be dropped entirely. No offence, it said, was established.

The complainant — the person who had originally lodged the FIR — filed a protest petition against this supplementary report. But the petition was dismissed for non-prosecution (the complainant did not pursue it).

On May 30, 2018, the magistrate accepted the supplementary report and dropped the proceedings. The order was brief. It did not discuss the first charge sheet. It did not explain why the initial police report implicating the three men was being discarded. It simply adopted the Crime Branch's recommendation.

Why the Sessions Court reversed

The complainant challenged the magistrate's order before the Sessions Court in Alappuzha. The Sessions Court set aside the magistrate's decision and directed the case to proceed. It relied on a single-judge decision of the Kerala High Court in Joseph v. Antony Joseph (2018), which had held that a magistrate cannot simply accept a supplementary report without considering the initial charge sheet.

The three accused men then approached the Kerala High Court under Section 482 CrPC (the High Court's inherent power to prevent abuse of its process or to secure the ends of justice). They argued that the Sessions Court had erred. The High Court dismissed their petition on March 3, 2021.

The accused appealed to the Supreme Court.

What the Supreme Court found

On February 18, 2022, a bench of Justice Dr. Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud and Justice Surya Kant heard the appeal. The court did not decide whether the three men were guilty or innocent. Instead, it focused on a procedural question: how must a magistrate deal with two conflicting police reports?

The court held that the magistrate had made a fundamental error. When a supplementary report under Section 173(8) is filed after an initial report under Section 173(2), the magistrate is duty-bound to read both reports together — "conjointly," as the court put it — and determine their cumulative effect. The magistrate must then decide whether grounds exist to presume that the accused has committed the offence. Accepting one report while ignoring the other is not permitted.

The court cited two of its own precedents: Vinay Tyagi v. Irshad Ali alias Deepak (2013) and Vinubhai Haribhai Malaviya v. State of Gujarat (2019). Both cases had established that further investigation under Section 173(8) does not erase the original charge sheet. Both reports remain on record, and the magistrate must consider them together.

The order that sent the case back

The Supreme Court did not decide whether the three accused should face trial. It set aside the magistrate's order and remitted the matter back to the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court-I in Alappuzha. The magistrate was directed to re-examine both reports in light of the Supreme Court's observations and take a fresh decision within one month.

The appeal was disposed of. The three accused men remain in procedural limbo — not convicted, not acquitted, but waiting for a magistrate to read both reports as the law requires.

Why this matters for every criminal case

For practitioners, the takeaway is straightforward. A magistrate cannot delegate the decision-making process to the police by simply adopting whichever report arrives last. The charge sheet and the supplementary report are both part of the same record. The magistrate must engage with both, weigh their contradictions, and arrive at an independent conclusion.

THE PLAY: When the police file two contradictory reports, the magistrate must read both conjointly and record reasons for preferring one over the other — anything less is legally unsustainable.

The magistrate in Alappuzha had two reports. He read one. The Supreme Court said: read both.