India’s police forces have long used one procedural shield more effectively than almost any other: the requirement of prior government sanction before a court can prosecute a public servant for acts done “in the discharge of official duty.” On August 24, 2026, the Supreme Court closed off a way that shield was being stretched further than the law allows — by holding that no such sanction is needed even to get an FIR registered and an investigation started against police officials, let alone to merely direct that investigation continue. The ruling, in Sri Anumandala Rajesh Reddy v. State of Karnataka & Anr., 2026 INSC 1039, matters well beyond one Karnataka case: it settles a recurring point of confusion between the old Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and the new Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and it removes a favourite early-stage defence used to stall complaints against police officers before an investigation ever gets off the ground.

Background: What Happened in Anumandala Rajesh Reddy

The appellant alleged that police officials, acting in collusion with private persons, had illegally detained him, coerced him, and tampered with his digital devices. According to the case record summarised by JuryScan, he first approached the local police and then the Director General of Police seeking redress, and got none. He then moved a Magistrate with a criminal complaint. The Magistrate, exercising powers under Section 156(3) of the CrPC, directed the police to register an FIR and investigate.

The State challenged that order before the Karnataka High Court, which quashed the FIR — holding that because the allegations concerned acts by police officers, prior sanction under Section 197 CrPC was mandatory before the FIR could even be registered. That left the complainant back where he started: alleging serious misconduct by police officers, with no FIR, no investigation, and no realistic route to sanction from a government that had already declined to act on his earlier representations.

The Question Before the Supreme Court

Section 197 CrPC (carried forward, with modifications, as Section 218 of the BNSS) bars a court from taking cognizance of an offence against certain public servants — including police officers — for acts done “while acting or purporting to act in the discharge of official duty,” unless the appropriate government has sanctioned the prosecution. The provision exists to protect officials from harassment through vexatious prosecutions over bona fide official acts.

The question in Anumandala Rajesh Reddy was narrower but consequential: does that protection also apply at the very first step — when a Magistrate orders an FIR to be registered under Section 156(3) CrPC (now Section 175(3) BNSS) — or only later, when a court is actually asked to take cognizance and try the case?

What the Supreme Court Held

A bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta set aside the Karnataka High Court’s order and restored the direction for investigation, holding that the sanction requirement under Section 197 CrPC “operates only at the stage of taking cognizance and has no application at the pre-cognizance stage of directing registration of an FIR,” as reported by Verdictum.

Pre-Cognizance Is Not Cognizance

The Court’s reasoning turns on a distinction that runs through the CrPC and now the BNSS alike: an order under Section 156(3) CrPC directing the police to register an FIR and investigate is a pre-cognizance step, not an act of taking cognizance under Section 190 CrPC. As LiveLaw reported, the Bench held that a Magistrate exercising Section 156(3) powers is not adjudicating guilt or even examining the complaint judicially in the way cognizance requires — the Magistrate is simply setting an investigation in motion so that facts can be gathered. Since Section 197 CrPC is triggered specifically at the stage a court “proceeds to take cognizance,” it has no purchase before cognizance is even in question.

“Alien to the Scheme” of Both Codes

The Court went further, holding that reading a sanction requirement into the FIR-registration stage would be “alien to the scheme” of the CrPC and equally alien to the scheme of the BNSS. That framing matters for two reasons. First, it forecloses the argument — often raised by police respondents — that Section 197’s protective purpose should be read expansively to stop even the fact-finding stage of a case involving officials. Second, by explicitly saying the same logic holds under the BNSS, the Court pre-empted any suggestion that the 2023 recodification changed this balance, even though the BNSS added new features (discussed below) to the sanction regime itself.

The practical effect: police and other protected public servants can be investigated — questioned, records examined, forensic steps taken — without the government first deciding whether to authorise their prosecution. Sanction remains necessary before a trial can begin, but it is no longer available as a tool to prevent an investigation from starting.

Why This Matters: Police Accountability and the BNSS Transition

Sanction requirements exist for a legitimate reason — protecting officers who make good-faith, if imperfect, decisions in dangerous and fast-moving situations from being dragged through vexatious private prosecutions. But as the Supreme Court itself has separately observed, protection is available only for acts “reasonably connected” to official duty, not as a blanket shield, per the Court’s established line of authority on Section 197 (discussed in LiveLaw’s coverage of that broader jurisprudence). The concern with reading that protection back into the FIR stage is precisely that it would let the sanctioning authority — typically the same government the officer serves — decide, before any facts are even investigated, whether an inquiry into its own personnel can begin at all. That is a much larger gate than Parliament built into Section 197 or Section 218 BNSS, and Anumandala Rajesh Reddy closes it.

The 120-Day Deemed-Sanction Clock Under Section 218 BNSS

The ruling also lands at a moment when the sanction regime itself is being reformed. Under Section 218 BNSS, the competent government must now decide a sanction request within 120 days of receiving it — failing which sanction is deemed to have been granted, a mechanism explained in detail by SCC Online’s analysis of the shift and by LiveLaw’s comparison of Section 197 CrPC and Section 218 BNSS. That deemed-sanction clock only starts running once a request for sanction is actually made — typically after an investigation has produced enough material to seek it. By confirming that investigations can begin without waiting on sanction, the Court’s ruling in effect lets that 120-day clock start sooner rather than later, rather than allowing the sanction question to be raised as a threshold bar that delays the investigation that would generate the sanction request in the first place.

Practical Implications for Complainants and Investigating Officers

For citizens with genuine grievances against police conduct — illegal detention, custodial coercion, evidence tampering, and similar allegations — the ruling removes a common early roadblock. A Magistrate’s Section 156(3)/Section 175(3) BNSS order can no longer be defeated merely by pointing out that the accused are police officers and no sanction has been obtained; that argument can only be raised later, if and when the prosecution seeks to take the case to trial.

For investigating officers and prosecutors, the case is a reminder to keep the two questions analytically separate through the life of a case: registering and investigating a complaint against a public servant is governed by ordinary criminal procedure, while sanction becomes a live issue only when a charge sheet is filed and the court is asked to take cognizance and proceed to trial. Conflating the two — as the Karnataka High Court did — risks having otherwise valid FIRs quashed on appeal, as happened here before the Supreme Court intervened.

For police officers themselves, the protection against harassment for genuine official acts is unaffected: sanction is still required before a trial on the merits can proceed, and the “reasonable connection to official duty” test still applies at that stage. What has changed is only that this protection cannot be invoked to block the fact-finding investigation that determines, in the first place, whether an act was within or outside the scope of official duty.

Conclusion

Anumandala Rajesh Reddy v. State of Karnataka is a narrow procedural ruling with a broad practical reach. By confirming that Section 197 CrPC sanction operates only at the cognizance stage — and that the same rule carries over cleanly to Section 218 BNSS — the Supreme Court has ensured that complaints against police officials cannot be strangled before an investigation even begins. For a criminal justice system now mid-transition from the CrPC to the BNSS, the judgment is also a useful signal that core constitutional and procedural safeguards developed under the old Code survive the recodification largely intact, even as the new Code layers in fresh mechanisms like the 120-day deemed-sanction rule.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this ruling mean police officers can now be prosecuted without any sanction at all?

No. Sanction under Section 197 CrPC (or Section 218 BNSS) is still required before a court can take cognizance of the offence and put an officer on trial. The ruling only clarifies that sanction is not needed at the earlier stage of registering an FIR and conducting an investigation.

What is the difference between Section 156(3) CrPC and Section 175(3) BNSS?

They serve the same function under the old and new codes respectively: both empower a Magistrate to direct the police to register an FIR and investigate a cognizable offence when a complainant has been unable to get the police to act on a complaint directly.

Why did the Karnataka High Court quash the FIR in the first place?

The High Court held that because the allegations were against police officials for acts said to be connected to their official duties, prior sanction under Section 197 CrPC was a mandatory precondition even to registering the FIR. The Supreme Court held this was legally incorrect.

What is the “deemed sanction” rule under the BNSS?

Section 218 BNSS requires the competent government to decide a request for sanction within 120 days of receiving it. If it fails to do so within that period, sanction is deemed to have been granted, preventing indefinite delay by the government in deciding whether to permit prosecution.

Does this judgment apply only to police officers, or to all public servants?

Section 197 CrPC and Section 218 BNSS apply to judges, magistrates, and public servants generally who cannot be removed from office except with government sanction, not only to police officers. The reasoning in this case — that sanction bites only at the cognizance stage — applies equally to any public servant covered by these provisions.

Can the accused officials still challenge the investigation later on other grounds?

Yes. This ruling deals only with the sanction question. Officials remain free to challenge an investigation or prosecution on other legal grounds, including at trial by arguing that their sanction, once sought, was wrongly granted or that their acts had no reasonable connection to official duty.

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