FIR is a written document prepared by police department of a few countries including India, Bangladesh, Pakistan etc.
Prior to any formal complaint to magistrate for a cognizable offence, evidence is required to support the allegations. Some matters are of urgent nature that needs to be dealt with immediately, for which police has been appointed by the law as an authority to conduct necessary investigations and make inquiries. This is for the reasons cognizable offence, are mostly of a severe nature and wrong against the state, hence before the matter reaches the court it needs to be checked and verified for the details provided by the person lodging an FIR.
This is done to make sure that court’s precious time is not wasted, on a thing which with time turns out be false, and malicious, in order to defame the accused.
Offence such as rape, murder, robbery, theft etc. are of a serious nature and are considered cognizable in nature, which also happens to non-bailable offence. The scope of FIR is that whenever there is a victim in any of such offence, the person doesn’t have to seek remedies through the principles used by people of an uncivilized society which is, “an eye for an eye”, or that in the time of need law is there to listen and help its subject.
FIR is filed by an individual in reporting of a cognizable offence, which post investigation by the police is submitted to magistrate as a complaint. In case of non-cognizable offence, which could be offence like, public nuisance, causing simple hurt, mischief, etc. the complaint is directly made to a magistrate and magistrate directs the police for an arrest.
FIR as defined u/s 154, Code of Criminal Procedure of 1973, is an information in oral or written format, given to a officer incharge of a police station for a cognizable offence. After this FIR and necessary investigation, a report is submitted to the magistrate which a formal complaint by the police officer.
These days, police department have developed a way to avoid taking small cases of petty theft and robbery which are cognizable in nature, by practices such as manipulating the less educated people to use terms which reduce the cognizable nature of the complaint to non-cognizable.
Words such as “lost” instead of “pick-pocket” or “stole” are conveyed by the police personals to the complainant to be used, or else the police won’t be able to file the FIR. Police for a non-cognizable offence, is not bound to take any action.
The main issue revolving around, filing an FIR is the language barrier. Since filing an FIR is the true implication of Fundamental Rights of our Indian Constitution, which is equality before law. Any person in India should be able to lodge an FIR in any of the official language recognized by our Constitution of India, throughout the India.
But in practicality, since police being an organization established by the state legislature, only follows the language prescribed in it.
Most of the foreign nationals won’t be aware of any of the official language of India, apart from English. The unanswered question remains is that how will a visitor of a city, who is not aware of any of the official language of a state, would lodge an FIR for a cognizable offence? Even though translators would be arranged, but won’t this give a head-start to the wrong doer?
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