When a police station refuses your complaint

“This is not our jurisdiction” is the most effective sentence in Indian policing, and it is not a legal answer to a complaint about a cognisable offence.

It works because it sounds procedural. It sends the complainant across the city to another station, where the same sentence is often available in reverse, and a meaningful number of people simply stop trying somewhere in between. What follows is what the law actually provides.

The Zero FIR

Where information disclosing a cognisable offence is given, an FIR is to be registered — and under the BNSS this is expressly to happen irrespective of the area where the offence was committed. The station registers what is called a Zero FIR, so named because it is entered without a regular serial number, and then transfers it to the station with territorial jurisdiction, which renumbers it and investigates.

The point of the mechanism is precisely to remove jurisdiction as a reason to refuse. Time matters most in the first hours of a serious offence; the arrangement exists so that nobody spends those hours in traffic.

The BNSS also allows information to be given electronically, with the requirement that it be signed within a stipulated period, and requires that a copy of the FIR be given to the informant free of cost. These are small provisions that do a lot of work.

The Lalita Kumari rule

In Lalita Kumari v Government of Uttar Pradesh (2013), a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held that registration of an FIR is mandatory where the information discloses a cognisable offence, and that no preliminary inquiry is permissible in such a case. A preliminary inquiry is permitted only in narrow categories — matrimonial and family disputes, commercial offences, medical negligence, corruption, and cases of abnormal delay — and even then it is meant to establish whether the information discloses a cognisable offence, not whether the complaint is likely to succeed.

Whether the complaint will ultimately stand up is not the question at the counter. Whether it discloses a cognisable offence is.

The two routes above the station

If registration is refused, two escalations exist and both are ordinary, not exotic:

• To the Superintendent of Police. The complainant may send the substance of the information in writing, by post, to the SP concerned. If the SP is satisfied that the information discloses a cognisable offence, they may investigate the case themselves or direct an investigation.
• To the Magistrate. A magistrate empowered to take cognisance may order an investigation. Under the BNSS the magistrate is required to consider the applicant’s submissions and any refusal by the police before doing so.

Both routes are used far less than they should be, largely because most people do not know they exist and stop at the first refusal.

Make the refusal expensive to repeat

The practical difficulty with a refusal is that it usually happens verbally, at a counter, with no record. The fix is to create a record on the spot:

• Put it in writing before you go. Carry two printed copies of the complaint. Hand one over; ask for an acknowledgement with a date, time and signature on the other.
• If acknowledgement is refused, post it. A registered post or speed post receipt addressed to the SP is proof of both content and date, and it costs almost nothing.
• Keep it factual. Dates, times, places, names, what happened, in order. Adjectives do not strengthen a complaint; specifics do.
• Ask for the FIR copy. If it has been registered, you are entitled to a copy free of cost. If nobody can produce one, the registration may not have happened.
• Note who you spoke to. Name, rank, time. This single habit changes the tone of the second visit.

What this is really about

None of the above is adversarial. Most refusals are not corrupt; they are workload management by people with too many files. But a complainant who arrives with a written complaint, a clear account and an awareness of the escalations is a materially different proposition from one who arrives upset and empty-handed — and the difference shows up in the outcome far more often than it should.

Bring paper. Note the time. Know the two routes above the counter. That is most of it.