Aug 23, 2010
This month, High Court issued a series of verdicts aimed at rectifying the judicial and police systems
Now that the Delhi High Court has entered the scene, lodging an FIR may become much easier for the common man. No longer will he have to run helter-skelter for getting the police to act on his complaint, or search for the right connections in the Capital’s officialdom to get the work done.
Striking a balance between its verdicts, the High Court also maintained that people caught in the wrong end of an FIR should not be subjected to undue harassment.
The court, in a string of rulings delivered in August, handed out a list of do’s and don’ts to the city police and lower courts, which reportedly resort to a “hyper-technical” approach while handling complaints.
Verbal complaint
The first landmark judgment in the series of recent verdicts came when Justice S N Dhingra held that a person need not essentially file a written complaint to get heard by a magistrate for registering an FIR. So, when a victim appears before a trial court and raises a complaint on the commission of an offence, the judge cannot dismiss his plea by saying he must first submit his complaint in writing and then produce the evidence and record his testimony. The High Court order obligates a magistrate to record the victim’s statement and order the police to probe into the matter after lodging an FIR, if the statement recounts a serious offence.
No harassment
While an FIR should be registered promptly, the High Court balanced its views by making it clear that an FIR has to be based on a “preliminary inquiry from the complainant, who must be asked to appear in person first, and not otherwise.” According to the court, a lower court judge must be sure that the complainant’s story is an “actual version” and not one that is “drafted on advice”.
“Many times, it is noticed that order for registration of FIR is given by magistrates without making preliminary inquiries on the truthfulness of the petitioner’s allegations. This often results in misuse of the judicial process. It is the duty of every magistrate to ensure that the court is not allowed to be used as a tool of harassment,” said Justice Dhingra in a separate judgement.
Go slow with arrest
In another order, the High Court ruled that an FIR need not be necessarily followed by an immediate arrest.
Justice Dhingra observed that very often, police officials do not record evidence to see whether the offence was actually committed or not and proceed with the arrest of the accused on the presumption that as the FIR is registered on the direction of a magistrate, there can be nothing wrong with it.
FIRs not a business
Directing the police to be professional, the High Court also came down heavily on the “sordid story of the working culture of the Delhi Police”. Justice Dhingra, in yet another ruling, had observed that while it was difficult to get a case registered in genuine cases, one could – with the “right connections” – get false FIRs registered easily.
Quashing an FIR against a man at the instance of his estranged wife, even though the couple had always stayed in the US, the judge asked the police not to reduce the exercise of securing justice into a “profitable business”.
Anti-dowry law makes it wife-biased, discriminatory,and poorly formulated. A complaint from your wife or her family member can land husband and his entire family in jail without any investigation. "The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." - Winston Churchill
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