Chennai: The Madras high court has held that the power to give a direction to register an FIR or to transfer investigation or to complete the investigation within a particular period or to alter the offence or to direct further investigation or to file a further report, falls within the jurisdiction of competent court and these powers can never be exercised by the Police Complaints Authority since by exercising such a power, it exceeds its authority and jurisdiction and starts acting like an alternate court of law.
Justice N.Anand Venkatesh who gave the ruling further said if this goes unchecked, there is a possibility where there can be a clash between a direction given by the Court and a direction given by a Police Complaints Authority. This will lead to unnecessary compound. This court went into this issue since this court found a series of directions given by the Police Complaints Authority, Puducherry for registration of FIR, for transfer of investigation, for further investigation etc and based on those directions petitions were filed before this court seeking for implementation of the directions, the judge added.
The judge said, "A copy of this order shall be marked to the Police Complaints Authority and the authority shall take note of this order and carry on with its functions in further."
The judge was disposing of a petition from S.Ramesh, which sought a direction to the police in Puducherry to comply with the orders of the Police Complaints Authority.
The petitioner had given a complaint before the police alleging land grabbing by the accused persons. In spite of the receipt of the complaint, no action was taken by the police. The petitioner therefore approached the Police Complaints Authority, Puducherry, which issued a set of directions. Since the directions were not complied with, the petitioner has preferred the present petition.
Public prosecutor submitted that pursuant to the directions of the Police Complaints Authority, an enquiry was conducted and the dispute was found to be civil in nature and therefore the complaint has been closed. He also questioned the powers of the Police Complaints Authority to issue such directions.
The judge said the Supreme Court in Prakash Singh case, was considering police reforms since the police Act has become completely outdated and did not contain provisions to deal with the current necessities. The Supreme Court had the opportunity of perusing various reports in this regard and it gave various directions to the Central government, State governments and Union Territories for compliance, till the law was framed by the appropriate legislations. "It is clear from the above direction that the Police Complaints Authority at the State level/Union Territories was formed to look into complaints against the officers of the rank of Superintendent of Police and above.
The State level Complaints Authority was authorized to take cognizance of only allegations of serious misconduct by the police personnel, which could include incidents involving death, grievous hurt or rape in police custody. The recommendations of the Complaints Authority against a delinquent police officer shall be binding on the authority oncerned", the judge added.
The judge said the scope of the function performed by the Police Complaints Authority, cannot be taken to such a level, wherein, the authority starts functioning as an alternative to courts that was not the purpose for which Police Complaints Authority was constituted by the Supreme Court. "The Supreme Court has categorically said that the State level Complaints Authority would take cognizance of only allegations of serious misconduct by the police personnel and recommend for taking departmental action and/or criminal action against the delinquent police officer", the judge added.
The judge said since the complaint given by the petitioner has already been inquired and closed it was left open to the petitioner to work out his remedy in accordance with law.
