Wrong To Directly Move HC If FIRs Not Filed: Telangana High Court
Citing the Supreme Court judgment in ‘Sakiri Vasu v. State of UP’ and ‘M. Subramaniam v. S. Janaki and others’, the High Court noted that the proper course for an aggrieved party, in the event of police inaction, was to avail of remedies provided under the Criminal Procedure Code (now the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita).
Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court has expressed dismay over some advocates wrongly advising their clients to invoke the writ jurisdiction of the High Court in relation to grievances about the refusal by the police to register first information reports (FIRs).
Citing the Supreme Court judgment in ‘Sakiri Vasu v. State of UP’ and ‘M. Subramaniam v. S. Janaki and others’, the High Court noted that the proper course for an aggrieved party, in the event of police inaction, was to avail of remedies provided under the Criminal Procedure Code (now the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita). This could be done by filing an application for a direction to the police to register an FIR, or initiating proceedings by way of a private complaint.
Justice N. Tukaramji of the High Court clarified that bypassing these remedies and directly invoking the writ jurisdiction of the High Court was impermissible, save in exceptional or extraordinary circumstances.
The judge was dealing with a petition filed by a group of individuals, including a former woman Maoist, seeking directions to the police to register a criminal case over a land dispute at Abdullapurmet on the outskirts of Hyderabad. The petitioners, residents of Nalgonda district, complained that certain private persons had trespassed onto their land and were attempting to evict them.
The petitioners alleged that despite submitting a written complaint to the local police in October 2017, no case was registered and their repeated requests were ignored. The judge dismissed the petition stating that there were no exceptional or extraordinary circumstances in the case and advised the petitioners to pursue the remedies before the magistrate court, in accordance with law, if the grievance still persisted.
