What You Can Do In Case Police Officer Refuses Your Request To File An FIR

If ever you come across a situation where you want to report a crime by filing an FIR, but the police officer declines your request on grounds that are unreasonable, you must know that there are options you can then adhere to.

The first step here is to approach a senior officer for registering the complaint. In case that doesn’t happen, you can pen down a written complaint and take it to the nearest Judicial Magistrate.

As soon as the magistrate evaluates your complaint, s/he will then order the police to register your FIR. These days, there are E-filing of complaints.

About Police FIR

Don’t forget to take the receipt

This is an important part of the process wherein you must remember to collect the receipt of the complaint, once it has been registered.

There can be instances when the police officer can blatantly deny your filing of an FIR, and this can be due to various reasons, the most common of which are: A. He thinks the issue is too petty to be considered, and B.

There’s an absence of proper territorial jurisdiction in the police station where you have gone to lodge your complaint.

Cognizable and non-cognizable crimes

Coming to the categorization of crimes, you must know that there are two types: The first one is Cognizable crimes and the second one is Non-cognizable crimes.

The first encompasses cases of rape, murder, rioting, dacoity, etc. while the second consists of cases like fraud, cheating, public nuisance, forgery, etc. It is only in case of cognizable crimes that the police can take action on its own and can arrest suspects without a warrant, whereas when it comes to non-cognizable crimes, the police cannot arrest anyone without a warrant and must wait to be navigated by the Magistrate to drive their course of action.

You can file a written petition in the available High Court, seeking compensation for the damage happened during the process of your FiR not being filed by the concerned authorities that had led to any sort of frustration or deprivation of liberty, life, of any person, as mentioned under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

And according to guidelines per U/s 166A(c), in case a public servant does not record any information Under subsection (1) of section 154 of Code of Criminal Procedure regarding the cognizable offence (examples aforementioned), which is punishable under Section 326A, 326B, 354, 354B, 370, 370A, 376, 376A, 376B, 376C, 376D, 376E or 509 of IPC s/he shall be punished with harsh imprisonment for a term that is not less than a total of six months, and may also get extended to two years and shall be liable for fine as well.