Police obligated to file FIR for serious offences: SC

In a path-breaking judgment, a full bench of the Bombay High Court has ruled that the
police is obligated to file a first information report (FIR) in regard to serious offences the moment a citizen approaches them with a complaint.

In case of ‘rare and exceptional cases’ where a complaint appears to be absurd, unscrupulous or patently false, the police can conduct a preliminary inquiry, not lasting more than two days, before lodging a FIR. Before conducting the preliminary enquiry, the police officer, ‘without exception’ has to make an entry in the daily diary register or station diary or roznamachar after recording the reasons for not filing FIR instantly.

The full bench comprising of chief justice Swatentar Kumar, justice SJ Vazifdar and justice AA Sayyed, in a judgment dated October 8, held that ‘no choice is vested in a police officer to turn away a citizen who wants to file a cognizable complaint’.

The full bench was settling an issue raised by a division bench of  justice Bilal Nazki and justice AP Bhangale in May this year. The division bench, while hearing a writ petition filed by one Sandeep Rammilan Shukhla, had stated that in light of various conflicting case laws upon the issue, it was unclear whether police had the discretion to postpone the registration of an FIR until it completed its preliminary inquiry. Thus it referred the matter to the larger bench.

While observing that the human rights of both the accused and victims should be taken into consideration, the court said that the purpose of criminal law is to permit everyone to go about their daily lives without fear of harm to person or property.

Accepting the fact that abuse of power is possible, the court stated that sometimes cases are filed just to harass someone ‘at the behest of some influential people’.