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46. Section 154 of Cr.P.C. forms a part of a chain of statutory provisions relating to investigation, and therefore, it must follow that the provisions of Sections 41, 157, 167 etc. have a bearing on the interpretation of Section 154 of Cr.P.C. The said judgments have interpreted Section 154 of Cr.P.C. purely on the literal interpretation test and while doing so, the other important tests of statutory interpretation, like a statute must be read as a whole and no provision of a statute should be considered and interpreted de-hors the other provisions, the rule of purposive construction etc. are lost sight of. He referred to the following cases - Tarachand and Another v. State of Haryana 1971 (2) SCC 579, Sandeep Rammilan Shukla v. State of Maharashtra and Others 2009 (1) Mh.L.J. 97, Sakiri Vasu v. State  of Uttar Pradesh and Others 2008 (2) SCC 409, Nasar Ali v. State of Uttar Pradesh 1957 SCR 657, Union of India and Another v. W.N. Chadha 1993 (Suppl.) 4 SCC 260, State of West Bengal v. S.N. Basak 1963 (2) SCR 52.

50. According to Mr. Naphade, these judgments have not considered the impact of Article 21 on Section 154 of Cr.P.C. After and beginning with Maneka Gandhi v.

Union of India and Another 1978 (1) SCC 248, this Court has applied Article 21 to several provisions relating to criminal law. This Court has also said that the expression "law" contained in Article 21 necessarily postulates law which is reasonable and not merely a statutory provision irrespective of its reasonableness or otherwise. In the light of Article 21, provisions of Section 154 of Cr.P.C. must be read down to mean that before registering an FIR, the Station House Officer must have a prima-facie satisfaction that there is commission of cognizable offence as registration of an FIR leads to  serious consequences for the person named as accused and for this purpose, the requirement of preliminary enquiry can be spelt out in Section 154 and can be said to be implicit within the provisions of Section 154 of Cr.P.C. Reliance was placed on Maneka Gandhi (supra) and S.M.D. Kiran Pasha v. Government of Andhra Pradesh and Others 1990 (1) SCC 328.

57. It is a trite proposition that a person who is named in an FIR as an accused, suffers social stigma. If an innocent person is falsely implicated, he not only suffers from loss of reputation but also mental tension and his personal liberty is seriously impaired. After Maneka Gandhi's case, the proposition that the law which deprives a person of his personal liberty must be reasonable, both from the stand point of substantive aspect as well as procedural aspect is now firmly established in our constitutional law. This warrants a fresh look at Section 154 of Cr.P.C. Section 154 Cr.P.C.

108. It is quite evident from the ratio laid down in the aforementioned cases that different Benches of this Court have taken divergent views in different cases. In this case also after this Court's notice, the Union of India, the States and the Union Territories have also taken or expressed divergent views about the interpretation of Section 154 Cr.P.C.

109. We have carefully analysed various judgments delivered by this Court in the last several decades. We clearly discern divergent judicial opinions of this Court on the main issue whether under Section 154 Cr.P.C., a police officer is bound to register an FIR when a cognizable offence is made out or he (police officer) has an option, discretion or latitude of conducting some kind of preliminary enquiry before registering the FIR.