Registration
When information about a cognizable offence reaches a police station, it is recorded under Section 173 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, the provision that replaced Section 154 of the CrPC. That record is the First Information Report. It gets a number, a date, and the sections of law the informant's account appears to disclose.
That is all it is. An FIR is the formal start of an investigation. It is not a finding of guilt, it is not evidence of guilt, and it is not a charge. The sections listed on it are the police officer's first reading of the complaint, not a court's conclusion.
An FIR records that an allegation was made. It does not decide whether the allegation is true.
Investigation
An investigating officer is assigned. They visit the scene, collect physical evidence, and record statements from witnesses under Section 180 of the BNSS, which corresponds to the old Section 161. Progress is written up in a case diary, which is an internal record and not a public one.
Statements recorded by the police at this stage are not signed by the witness and are not themselves evidence of what happened. Their main use at trial is to test whether a witness's account in court differs from what they told the police.
The report to the magistrate
When the investigation is finished, the police must file a report with the jurisdictional magistrate under Section 193 of the BNSS, corresponding to the old Section 173(2). It takes one of two forms.
- ›A charge sheet, if the police consider there is enough evidence to proceed. It lists the offences, the accused, the witnesses and the material relied on.
- ›A closure report, if the investigation found no offence, found the complaint unsupported, or found that the dispute is civil rather than criminal. The complainant can object to a closure report, and the magistrate decides whether to accept it.
Cognizance and trial
The police do not decide guilt. On receiving a charge sheet, the magistrate considers whether to take cognizance of the offence. If cognizance is taken, the accused is summoned, charges are framed, and the trial begins. Witnesses are examined on oath, in open court, and can be cross-examined. Only at the end of that process does a court pronounce a verdict.
Depending on the offence, the trial happens before a magistrate or is committed to a Sessions Court. Either way, it is the court, not the FIR and not the police, that decides.
Why this matters for a published FIR
State police portals publish FIRs at the first step of this process, usually within twenty-four to seventy-two hours of registration, under directions the Supreme Court gave in Youth Bar Association of India (2016). What is published is therefore the allegation as first recorded, before any investigation, and long before any court has evaluated it.
Subsequent milestones during the investigation, such as witness statements recorded under Section 180 BNSS, case diary entries, or whether the police eventually filed a charge sheet or a closure report under Section 193 BNSS, are not added to the public portal's FIR PDF. The document served by the police portal or found on FIRSetu remains frozen at the moment of registration. To find out whether an investigation led to a charge sheet or trial, searches must move from the police portal to the court docket on eCourts (ecourts.gov.in).