The First Information Report (FIR) occupies a foundational but evidentially modest place in Indian criminal procedure: procedurally indispensable in setting the machinery of investigation in motion, yet doctrinally excluded from serving as substantive proof of guilt. This article examines the evidentiary value of the FIR following the replacement of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, by the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS), and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA), respectively. It traces the statutory architecture of Section 173 BNSS, including the codification of the Zero FIR and electronic registration, and examines the continuing tension between Section 173(3) BNSS and the Supreme Court's mandatory-registration doctrine in Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh. The article then develops the settled doctrine that the FIR is not substantive evidence and may be used only to corroborate or contradict its maker under Sections 160 and 148 of the BSA, before analysing the special problems posed by confessional FIRs, FIRs lodged by an accused as admissions of conduct, the narrow res gestae and dying-declaration exceptions, and the consequences of delay. It concludes that the BNSS-BSA framework, despite renumbering, preserves rather than reforms this century-old body of judicial doctrine.