New Delhi, Jan. 7 -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday set aside a 2019 judgment of the Delhi high court that had mandated the registration of separate first information reports (FIRs) for each investor or depositor allegedly cheated in large-scale economic offences such as Ponzi schemes and mass homebuyer frauds. A bench of justices Sanjay Kumar and Alok Aradhe held that the manner in which criminal law is set into motion cannot be governed by a rigid or inflexible rule, and that whether multiple FIRs are required, or a single consolidated FIR would suffice, must depend on the facts of each case. Overturning the July 8, 2019 ruling in state v Khimji Bhai Jadeja, the apex court clarified that there can be no blanket proposition that multiple acts of cheating, even if committed against different victims, must necessarily lead to the registration of multiple FIRs, particularly where the allegations point to a single conspiracy or a continuous transaction. In its 2019 ruling, the Delhi high court had put an end to the prevailing practice of the Delhi Police and the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of registering a single FIR in cases involving cheating of a large number of investors or depositors, where one victim was treated as the complainant and others were shown merely as witnesses. The high court had held that in cases involving inducement, allurement and cheating of a large number of investors or depositors, each deposit constituted a separate and individual transaction, necessitating a separate FIR for each complainant who disclosed a cognisable offence. The high court reasoned that the practice of lodging a single FIR deprived other victims of vital legal rights, including the right to file protest petitions against closure reports, oppose discharge of the accused, seek cancellation of bail, or pursue remedies if the principal complainant entered into a settlement or withdrew from the proceedings. The ruling had emerged from a reference made by additional district and sessions judge Kamini Lau while dealing with a case involving 1,852 victims of a Ponzi scheme. The Supreme Court, however, found the high court's approach to be legally unsustainable. At the heart of the controversy, the bench noted, was whether the offences allegedly committed against the 1,852 complainants formed part of the "same transaction" -- a concept that is not rigidly defined in criminal law and must be assessed on a case-by-case basis....