The Complaint the Police Called 'Civil'
On 3 March 2025 Pradip Das of Balisatra village, under Nalbari Police Station, submitted a written complaint alleging that his neighbour Bipul Das had, on 26 February 2025, built an earth bund across a natural drainage channel and thereby flooded Pradip's paddy land, and that when Pradip protested on 1 March 2025, Bipul and two others abused him and beat him with a lathi, causing swelling on his forearm. The Officer-in-Charge recorded the complaint in the station diary but declined to register an FIR, endorsing on it: 'Dispute relates to drainage of land, purely civil. Parties may approach the civil court.' Pradip sent the same complaint by registered post to the Superintendent of Police, who returned it to the same police station with the endorsement 'do the needful'. On 20 April 2025 Pradip filed an application before the Sub-Divisional Judicial Magistrate under Section 175(3) BNSS (earlier Section 156(3) CrPC) praying for a direction to register an FIR; no affidavit accompanied the application. The Magistrate wrote on it the same day: 'Police to register FIR and investigate. Report compliance within 15 days.'
1. Was the Officer-in-Charge justified in refusing to register the information as an FIR? Examine what the complaint disclosed.
Read the worked answer
The complaint is composite and must be split into its two limbs.
Civil limb. A natural drainage channel, an obstruction raised across it, and consequent waterlogging of agricultural land raise easementary and nuisance questions. The police cannot adjudicate these; the remedy is a civil suit for mandatory injunction or removal of nuisance with damages.
Criminal limb. The allegation concerning 1 March 2025 is that three named persons abused the complainant and beat him with a lathi, causing injury, at a stated time and place. That is a criminal allegation, and the fact that it is embedded in a boundary/drainage dispute does not neutralise it.
The mandatory registration rule of Lalita Kumari v. Government of U.P., (2014) 2 SCC 1, applies: if the information discloses a cognizable offence, registration under Section 173 BNSS is mandatory, and the pendency of a civil dispute in the background is not a valid ground for refusal. Where the information contains both civil and criminal elements, the correct course is to register for the criminal element and leave the civil element to be agitated elsewhere.
Further, if part of the information relates to a non-cognizable offence, the officer is still bound to enter the substance in the appropriate register and to seek the Magistrate's order under Section 174 BNSS (155 CrPC) before investigating that part. He cannot do nothing.
The station diary entry plus a note directing the complainant to the civil court is therefore not a lawful disposal. The officer was right about the drainage dispute but wrong in treating the entire complaint as civil.
2. Is the Magistrate's order of 20 April 2025 sustainable in law? Identify its defects and the order that ought to have been passed.
Read the worked answer
An order under Section 175(3) BNSS is a judicial order and is valid only if the Magistrate applied his mind to (i) whether the information discloses a cognizable offence, and (ii) whether the police have failed or refused to investigate.
The absence of an affidavit is not fatal. It is an irregularity curable by calling for an affidavit or by examining the complainant on oath. The Magistrate's jurisdiction does not depend on the form of the application.
Delay is not fatal either. The gap between 1 March and 20 April is accounted for by the postal complaint to the Superintendent of Police and its return to the police station. Delay is a factor to be weighed, not an automatic bar.
The real defect is the width of the order. 'Police to register FIR and investigate' covers the whole complaint, including the drainage dispute, which the Magistrate has no power to hand over to the police for investigation. An order under Section 175(3) must be confined to the criminal content of the complaint.
The order should therefore be read down: registration and investigation confined to the assault and intimidation allegation, the civil dispute expressly left to the civil court, a compliance report called for, and a direction that the order does not authorise arrest as a matter of course. So read, it can stand; to the extent it reaches the civil limb, it is liable to be set aside. The order also falls short of the ideal in that it records no reasons at all, which weakens it on any challenge.
3. What was the legal effect of the Superintendent of Police's endorsement, and what should the complainant's application under Section 175(3) have contained?
Read the worked answer
Section 173(4) BNSS (earlier Section 154(3) CrPC) gives an aggrieved informant a second statutory route. If the Superintendent of Police is satisfied that the information discloses a cognizable offence, he must himself investigate, or direct a subordinate officer to investigate. The section is not satisfied by returning the complaint to the very station that refused to register it.
'Do the needful' is an abdication, not a direction. It leaves the complainant exactly where he began and gives the Magistrate no material showing that the higher authority applied its mind.
The consequences are practical: (a) the Superintendent's non-compliance strengthens the complainant's case that the police machinery refused to act; (b) it explains the delay between 1 March and 20 April, which the Magistrate is bound to consider and which is fully accounted for; and (c) the Superintendent may be directed to report why the information was not investigated under Section 173(4).
As to the application itself, a properly drafted application under Section 175(3) should annex (i) the written complaint, (ii) the postal receipt and acknowledgment of the complaint to the Superintendent, (iii) his endorsement, and (iv) a short affidavit of readiness to prove the facts. It should identify the cognizable offence disclosed, expressly exclude the civil limb, and pray for registration and investigation confined to that limb, with a compliance report. This pre-empts the two stock objections - delay and vagueness of the alleged offence.