# Telangana High Court: death case final reports must go to judicial magistrate 2026-08-18T06:51:47+00:00 | Governance | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 1 independent outlet The Telangana High Court has ruled that police investigating unnatural or accidental deaths under the old Code of Criminal Procedure Section 174 must file their final report before a Judicial Magistrate of First Class, not an Executive Magistrate. Justice Suddala Chalapathi Rao also held that the person who first gave information about the death must be told what action the police took. The order came on a petition by R. Jaya Laxmi, whose husband R. Laxman, a BSNL telephone mechanic, died in May 2014 after falling into an uncovered ditch dug for the Godavari Drinking Water Supply Project at Yapral. She alleged police closed the case without investigating the contractor's liability. The court refused to order a reinvestigation after more than a decade, but directed the police to follow the procedure under Section 173(2) CrPC, now Section 193(3) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, for all such investigations. The court cited the Madras High Court decision in Manohari v. District Superintendent of Police and Supreme Court precedents. It directed its registry to send a copy of the order to the Director General of Police for circulation to all police stations. ## Coverage - livelaw.in This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above. Tags: Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, Justice Suddala Chalapathi Rao, Telangana High Court Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/telangana-high-court-death-case-final-reports-must-go-to-judicial-magistrate/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/telangana-high-court-death-case-final-reports-must-go-to-judicial-magistrate/#story-in-brief Review state: restored archive article, accurate at time of publication, not offered to search indexes. How this brief was made: an AI model read the report linked above and wrote this summary and analysis, which were published automatically. Published briefs are sampled every hour by an automated quality check; the editor verifies its findings and approves corrections, and corrected briefs carry a dated correction line. We do no original reporting. Methodology: https://indianopinion.org/ai-use-policy/