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Various petitions complaining about the harassments are being reported and filed before the courts seeking directions to abstain the police authorities from harassing people in the shade of doing the investigation.

And one of the primary reason has been that the Police Authorities does take a benefit on the part of the common people as they don’t have the knowledge of the provisions which are providing them remedies in each of the situations.

As to keep yourself safe from being a victim of such harassments keep a take of the laws which are being stated or under which the work is done.

What is an Investigation

 

Under Section 2(h) of the Code of Criminal Procedure Investigation is defined as, “investigation” includes all the proceedings under this code for the collection of evidence conducted by a police officer or by any other person (other than a Magistrate) who is authorized by a Magistrate in this behalf.

Here it ends with the formation of the opinion as to whether on the material collected, there is a case to place the accused before a Magistrate for trial and if so, taking the necessary steps for the same by filing of a charge-sheet under Section 173, Stated under the case Union of India v. Prakash P. Hinduja.

A three-judge bench in H.N.Rishbud v. State of Delhi, while indulged in an investigation, has stated that under the Code, Investigation consists generally of the following steps:

  1. Proceeding to the Place,
  2. Detection of the Facts and Situation of the case,
  3. Discovering and Arresting the Suspected offender,
  4. Gathering the Pieces of evidence relating to the commission of the offensive act which may consist of:
  • The investigation of numerous people (including the accused) and the markdown of their statements into writing, if the officer thinks fit about it.
  • The exploration of places or apprehension of things considered necessary for the investigation and to be produced at the time of the trial.

Formulation of the opinion as to whether the material gathered there is a case to place the accused before the Magistrate for trial and if so taking necessary steps for the same by filing a charge sheet under Section 173. In Adri Dharan Das v. the State of W.B., it has been stated that:

“Arrest is a part of the procedure of investigation expected to get many purposes. The accused may have addressed the insights about the different points of intention, planning, commission and impact of the crime and connection of other people, if any, in the crime.”

Guidelines Issued by the Court

The court issued the following guidelines to circumvent such situations of the harassment which can take place while the investigation is under process:

  1. When there is a Situation where any person is summoned by the reason of being named in the complaint or any witness to the incident complained of, The Duty of the police officer is to summon such person through a written summon under Section 160 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Specifying a particular date and time for appearing before them for certain investigation.
  2. There should be a Recording in the Daily Diary/ Station Diary/ General Diary of the Police station about the minutes of the investigation.
  3. The Police Officer should not indulge in any kind of harassment done to the people while doing any investigation.
  4. The Guidelines decided for the preliminary enquiry or registration of F.I.R. by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh and others shall be strictly followed;

There are the Guidelines Specified by the Court are being Stated as follows:

  1. Registration of FIR is compulsory, stated in Section 154 of the CrPC., if the information reveals commission of a cognizable offence and no preliminary inquiry is permissible in such a situation;
  2. If the information gathered does not reveal a cognizable offence but it shows a demand for an inquiry, a preliminary inquiry may be conducted only to ascertain whether a cognizable offence is disclosed or not;
  3. If the inquiry discloses the commission of a cognizable offence, the FIR must be registered. In cases where preliminary inquiry ends in closing the complaint, a copy of the entry of such closure must be delivered to the first informant immediately and not later than one week.
  4. The Officer cannot omit or avoid his duty of registering about the offence committed if it is revealed as cognizable. An Action must be taken against culpable officers who do not register the FIR if the information received by him discloses a cognizable offence;
  5. The purview of a preliminary inquiry is not to verify the truth or otherwise of the information received but only to confirm whether the information reported reveals any cognizable offence.
  6. As the General Diary/ Station Diary under which all the information are being recorded can be used to state that whether the collection of information reveals that a certain offence is cognizable and whether the relevant information is leading the police to report an FIR, or leading to an inquiry.

Here in the case, The issue which arises for consideration was whether a police officer is bound to register a First Information Report (FIR) upon receiving any information relating to commision to a cognizable offence under Section 154 of the code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 or do the police officer has the power to conduct a preliminary investigation in order to test the accuracy of such information before registering the issue.

A Writ petition was filed under Article 32 of the Constitution, by one Lalita Kumari being a minor at that time filed the same through her father, Shri Bhola Kamat for issuance of a writ of Habeas Corpus for the directions to be taken against the respondents herein for the protection of his minor daughter who has been kidnapped. The objection was that on date 11/May/2008, a written report was submitted by the petitioner before the police officer-in-charge of the police station concerned who didn’t take any action about the same. Consequently, when the Superintendent of Police was moved, an FIR was registered. According to which the petitioner, consequently states that the measuring steps were not taken either for apprehending the accused or for the recovery of the minor girl child.

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