The police will not write your FIR — and one “no” at the counter is not where the law ends

Three doors, and the law puts them in an order

The reason a refusal feels final is that most people only know about one door. There are three, and they are not alternatives you choose between — they are a sequence, and each one assumes you have been through the one before it.

The question that comes before all three doors

The duty to register an FIR does not attach to every grievance. It attaches to a cognizable offence — broadly, one in which a police officer may investigate, and arrest, without first getting an order from a Magistrate. Serious offences against the person and against property largely fall here.

A non-cognizable offence is the opposite. There, Section 174 provides that the officer in charge enters or causes to be entered the substance of the information in a book, and refers the informant to the Magistrate. And sub-section (2) is the one that decides the argument: no police officer shall investigate a non-cognizable case without the order of a Magistrate having power to try the case or commit it for trial.

So the officer who tells you he cannot register an FIR on that complaint is very often stating the law accurately. He is not obstructing you; he is telling you that the road runs through the Magistrate rather than through him. Arguing at the counter cannot change that, and an hour spent arguing is an hour not spent writing the application that would actually work.

Which offences fall on which side is set out against each offence in the First Schedule, and we deliberately do not print a list. It would be long, a summary of it would be partly wrong, and the damage from applying a wrong classification to your own facts is exactly the damage this page exists to prevent. Describe what happened in plain words to an advocate; the answer takes one sentence.

“This is a civil matter” — sometimes an excuse, sometimes true

The second most common thing said at the counter deserves an honest answer rather than an indignant one.

A dispute about money that was lent and not returned, a boundary, a builder who did not deliver, a partner who walked out of a business, a contract that was broken — these are civil claims. The fact that somebody behaved badly, or that you feel cheated, does not by itself convert a civil wrong into a criminal offence. What would convert it is a specific ingredient, such as a dishonest intention existing at the very beginning rather than a failure that came later, and that is a question of fact and evidence.

There is also a real cost to getting this wrong in your favour. An FIR registered on what is substantially a civil dispute is precisely the kind the High Court is asked to quash, and our page on quashing an FIR sets out how that argument is run. You can spend a year obtaining something that is then set aside, and be no closer to your money.

So ask yourself what you actually want. If the answer is your money back, a legal notice followed by a civil claim may get it years earlier than the criminal road, and our page on whether you need a lawyer at all will tell you which of them you can start yourself.

Door one — what Section 173 requires

Where the information does disclose a cognizable offence, the position is strong and it is worth knowing precisely.

Section 173(1) requires every information relating to the commission of a cognizable offence to be recorded by the officer in charge of a police station. The information may be given orally or by electronic communication. And the sub-section carries the words that end the most common excuse: it applies irrespective of the area where the offence is committed.

Behind that stands Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh (2014), where a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held that registration of an FIR is mandatory if the information discloses a cognizable offence; that the word “shall” in the corresponding provision admitted of no discretion; and that where a preliminary enquiry was permissible at all, it was only to ascertain whether a cognizable offence was disclosed — not to test whether the information was true. That distinction has never been displaced, and it is the sentence to have in your head at the counter.

Zero FIR — now in the statute, not just in a circular

“It did not happen in our area” is the excuse that sends more people home than any other, and it was never a good one. It is now clearly not one.

A Zero FIR is an FIR registered at whichever police station you reach, given the number zero instead of a serial number, and then transferred to the station that has territorial jurisdiction. It exists so that a person who has just been assaulted, robbed or defrauded is not sent across a city to find the correct thana while evidence disappears.

What has changed is its footing. It used to rest on court directions and departmental circulars, which meant arguing about instructions the person at the counter had not read. The requirement that information be recorded irrespective of where the offence was committed now sits in the text of Section 173(1) itself. If you are being turned away on jurisdiction, name the section and ask for the refusal in writing.

Which police station, and who the DCP is

Ordinarily the police station is the one within whose limits the offence was committed, and for most people that is the one nearest the place it happened rather than the one nearest home. Where there is any doubt, or any argument, the Zero FIR answer above applies and you should go to whichever station you can reach.

Delhi is organised into districts, each headed by a Deputy Commissioner of Police, and it is that officer who occupies the position the statute calls the Superintendent of Police for the purposes of door two. So the escalation under Section 173(4) goes to the DCP of the district in which the police station falls — not to a general address and not to a helpline.

Find out, before you need it, which district your police station belongs to and what the DCP office address is. It is published, it takes a few minutes, and the moment you need it you will be upset and in a hurry. We have deliberately not printed addresses or numbers here because they change and a stale one wastes a day; ask at the station, or ask us on the call.

Where the offence happened online, the electronic report is usually only half of what should be done that day — the content itself is removed on a separate route with its own deadlines, not by the police. Our online abuse and harassment page sets the two apart and explains which clock is running on each.

Filing electronically, and the step people skip

Information may now be given by electronic communication. That is a real convenience and it creates a real trap.

An electronic submission has to be signed by the person giving it within the prescribed period for it to be taken on record as an FIR. An online complaint that is never signed is a submission sitting in a system — not an FIR, and not a foundation for anything that comes later. People file at midnight, feel that the matter is in hand, and discover weeks later that nothing was ever registered.

So treat an online filing as the first half of the job. Go and complete it, take the acknowledgement, and keep the reference number with the date. We do not print the portal address or the number of days here, because those are administrative and are revised; ask at the station or ask your advocate for the current position.

The fourteen-day enquiry — the genuinely new thing

This provision did not exist in the old Code and it is the one most likely to be quoted at you without explanation.

Section 173(3) allows the officer in charge, on receiving information about an offence punishable with three years or more but less than seven years, to first conduct a preliminary enquiry to ascertain whether there exists a prima facie case — within fourteen days, and with the prior permission of an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police.

Notice what that band covers. A very large number of ordinary offences that bring people to a police station sit inside three to seven years, so this is not a narrow exception. Notice also what it does not say: it does not permit an open-ended enquiry, it does not permit one without permission, and it does not permit one at all outside that band.

How this statutory enquiry sits alongside Lalita Kumari, which tied the exception to the category of case rather than to the length of the sentence, is being argued and written about, and this page takes no position on it. What is not in doubt is that an enquiry is a step before registration, not a substitute for it.

Writing the complaint so that it can be registered

A great many complaints are refused not because anybody is obstructing them but because, as written, nobody could register anything from them.

Write it in the order events happened. Put the delay, if there is one, into the complaint itself with a single honest sentence explaining it. List what you are attaching. Sign it, date it, and put your phone number on it. We prepare police complaints to your instructions, and where the matter is online fraud or a missing person there are separate forms of it that ask for different things.

Proof that you gave it — the most useful paragraph on this page

If you remember nothing else, remember this. Every door after the first one depends on your being able to show, on a date, that you gave a complaint and what it said.

None of this is confrontational and none of it requires a lawyer. It is the difference between an application to the Magistrate that has an annexure and one that has a story.

Where the law says the complaint must come to you

Two provisos to Section 173(1) are among the most useful things in the new law and among the least known, because they reverse the assumption that the complainant must present themselves at a counter.

The first concerns offences against women. Where the information is given by the woman against whom certain offences are alleged to have been committed, it is to be recorded by a woman police officer or any woman officer. This is not a courtesy that depends on who is on duty; it is how the statute says that information is to be recorded.

The second concerns a person who is temporarily or permanently mentally or physically disabled. Their information is to be recorded by a police officer at the residence of the person seeking to report the offence, or at a convenient place of that person’s choice, in the presence of an interpreter or a special educator — and the recording of that information is to be videographed.

Which specific offences the first proviso lists is a matter of section numbers that should be checked against the current text rather than copied from a page, so we have not reproduced them here. Your advocate, or the duty officer, can identify them in a moment.

Door two — the Superintendent of Police

Section 173(4) provides the next step directly. Where the officer in charge refuses to record the information, the person aggrieved may send the substance of that information, in writing and by post, to the Superintendent of Police — who, in Delhi’s structure, is the Deputy Commissioner of Police for the district. If he is satisfied that the information discloses a cognizable offence, he shall either investigate the case himself or direct an investigation.

Two reasons to take this step seriously rather than treating it as a formality on the way to court. It works more often than people expect, because a written escalation lands on a desk where somebody has to record what was done with it. And it has become a precondition for door three, so skipping it does not save time — it costs you the application you file next.

What the application should contain is the same facts as the original complaint, plus the date on which you gave that complaint, to whom, and what happened. Attach the receipt or the postal proof. Send it by a mode that can be proved, and keep the proof. We prepare these applications to your instructions.

Door three — the Magistrate, and what changed

Under the old law this was Section 156(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code, and it was, in practice, a wide door. It is now Section 175(3) of the BNSS, and it is narrower in a specific and deliberate way.

A Magistrate competent to take cognizance may order an investigation. But the provision now requires that the application show that the applicant had already made an application under Section 173(4) to the Superintendent of Police; that it be supported by an affidavit; and it permits the Magistrate to make such enquiry as he considers necessary and to consider the submissions of the police officer concerned before ordering an investigation.

The affidavit requirement is not merely an obstacle put in your way. It is aimed at false complaints as much as at police inaction, and it means the account you put on oath is one you will be held to. Take that as a reason to be exact. We prepare the application and the affidavit to your advocate’s instructions, and arrange the attestation; what is pleaded is his.

The fourth road — not through the police at all

There is a route that does not ask the police to do anything. Instead of asking that the case be investigated, you go to the Magistrate and ask him to take cognizance on your own complaint.

Section 223 provides that a Magistrate having jurisdiction, while taking cognizance of an offence on complaint, shall examine upon oath the complainant and the witnesses present, if any, and the substance of that examination is reduced to writing and signed by the complainant, the witnesses and the Magistrate.

That is a fundamentally different proceeding from an investigation. There is no police machinery collecting evidence for you; you bring your witnesses, you produce your documents, and you carry the case. For some matters — where the evidence is documentary and already in your hands — that is an advantage, because nothing depends on anybody else’s diligence. For others — where what you need is a seizure, a forensic examination, or records held by third parties — it is a serious handicap.

The proviso that changed complaint cases

And there is a new sentence in Section 223 that anybody contemplating this road has to know about, because it changes the whole shape of the first hearing:

“Provided that no cognizance of an offence shall be taken by the Magistrate without giving the accused an opportunity of being heard.”

Under the old Section 200 of the Criminal Procedure Code the proposed accused had no part at that stage at all. The Magistrate examined the complainant, and if satisfied, issued process; only then did the other side appear. Now the person you are complaining against is heard before cognizance is taken.

What that means in practice, stated plainly: the other side learns about your complaint at the beginning rather than after summons, and your complaint has to be able to survive being read by them and answered on day one. It also means a complaint built on exaggeration is much less likely to get past the first date than it used to be. Whether that is a reform or an obstacle is being argued; that it changes how a complaint must be drafted is not in doubt.

Which road — investigation or complaint case

This is a decision for an advocate who has heard your facts, not a preference. It is also one of the few decisions on this site where choosing wrongly costs months rather than a filing fee.

The first day, before anybody drafts anything

The FIR is registered. Get the copy and read it

Registration is not the end of your involvement; it is the start of a document you have to check.

The informant is entitled to a copy of the FIR free of cost, and in most cases FIRs are also published online. Get it the day it is registered. Then read it as if somebody else had written it about you — because somebody did.

If something is wrong, raise it in writing at once and keep the copy. Corrections and additional statements are ordinary and unremarkable in week one. In month six they look like an afterthought.

An FIR is not an arrest, and both sides get this wrong

Two opposite disappointments come from the same misunderstanding.

The complainant expects that registration means somebody will be picked up, and is bewildered when nothing visible happens for weeks. The person named expects to be taken away that night, and spends a fortnight in panic that shapes every decision badly.

An FIR is the recording of information so that an investigation may begin. Arrest is a separate decision, governed by its own provisions and its own safeguards, and in a great many cases nobody is arrested at all. What follows registration is investigation: statements, documents, sometimes a site inspection, sometimes forensic work.

Understanding this stops complainants from concluding that the police have been bought, and stops the accused from doing the things — approaching the complainant, pressuring witnesses, deleting things — that convert a defensible position into an indefensible one.

It is registered and nothing is happening

This is the commonest complaint after a successful registration, and unlike most frustrations it has concrete answers.

Write to the investigating officer’s senior, setting out the date of the FIR, its number, and what you have not been told. Where the investigation is not proceeding, an application to the Magistrate for directions is available, and your advocate will know the form it should take. Where the real question is what has been done rather than what should be done, an application for information sometimes produces movement in a file simply because somebody has to answer for it.

Keep every one of these in writing, with a receipt. A file containing five dated applications and their acknowledgements is a file a court can act on. A file containing five remembered visits is not.

Chargesheet, closure report, and the thing complainants are not told

An investigation ends in one of two documents placed before the Magistrate. Either a police report — what everyone calls a chargesheet — or a report saying no case is made out, commonly called a closure or untraced report.

Here is the part most complainants never hear: a closure report is not automatically the end. The informant is entitled to notice of it, and may file a protest petition asking the Magistrate not to accept the report and setting out why. The Magistrate is not bound by the police conclusion. He may take cognizance despite it, or direct further investigation.

People are told on the phone that the case has been closed, and they stop. If that is where you are, take the closure report to an advocate rather than taking the phone call as the answer. We prepare the petition to his instructions.

And if it has gone past a notice to an actual arrest, the position changes entirely and the clock changes with it. What the family should do in the first twenty-four hours, and the two rights that have to be claimed — default bail on the sixtieth or ninetieth day, and release under Section 479 — are set out in our arrest and bail guide.

If an FIR has been registered against you

This page is written mainly for the person trying to get one registered, but the other side arrives here too, so it should be answered honestly.

See an advocate the same day. Do not go to the police station to explain, alone and unprepared, and do not go to the complainant to sort it out — both are how people make their situation considerably worse in an afternoon. Depending on the facts, the routes include applying for anticipatory bail, cooperating with the investigation while represented, and where the FIR does not disclose an offence at all or is substantially a civil dispute, moving the High Court to quash it. We prepare the anticipatory bail and bail documentation and the replies to your advocate’s instructions.

What never helps: threatening the complainant, approaching witnesses, destroying or altering anything, or leaving messages that will be read out in court. In matters that began as a family quarrel this is the single commonest way a case that was going to collapse becomes a case that does not.

Delay in going to the police

Delay is not a bar, but it is always asked about, so it should be answered in your own document rather than in cross-examination.

Courts accept explained delay, and the accepted explanations are the ordinary human ones: fear of the other side, injury and hospitalisation, being financially or physically dependent on the person complained against, trying the family or the panchayat first, not understanding what had happened, being a child at the time. What damages a case is a gap nobody explains, or an explanation that appears for the first time years later.

So put it in the complaint, in one plain sentence, on the day you file. “I did not go earlier because…” costs you nothing and closes a door that would otherwise be used against you.

What actually carries an FIR forward

Not the strength of feeling in the complaint. Material that existed independently of it.

Where electronic material is involved, how it is produced matters as much as what it says, and that is a technical area with its own requirements — our page on the electronic evidence certificate sets out why a screenshot alone is often not enough.

Things that quietly destroy a good complaint

Do you actually need an advocate for this?

The honest answer is: not for all of it, and we would rather say so than sell you something.

Our guide on whether you need a lawyer works through this in general, and how to choose one covers verifying that somebody is actually enrolled before you hand over papers.

If paying for an advocate is the difficulty

Nobody plans for this expense, and it lands on people at the worst moment — after they have already been robbed, injured or cheated. Free legal services under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 exist for precisely this, and several categories are entitled regardless of income, while others are entitled below the limit the State Authority notifies. There is a legal services committee attached to the court complexes, the Delhi State Legal Services Authority publishes the current limit and a helpline, and asking costs nothing at all. We have not printed the income figure here because it is revised. Ask at the complex, or ask us and we will point you at the right desk.

Keeping the file

One folder, kept in date order from the first day. Your own account, written before anybody else’s version existed. The complaint exactly as handed in, with the receipt or the postal proof clipped to it. The FIR copy. Every application to the DCP, the Magistrate or the investigating officer, each with whatever acknowledgement came back. Medical papers. The list of what evidence exists and where it is. And on top of all of it, one sheet of dates.

Nobody makes that front sheet and everybody needs it. The reason is specific here: door three is built entirely on dates — the day you complained, the day you were refused, the day you wrote to the DCP. If any of those has to be reconstructed from memory while an affidavit is being sworn, you are in trouble before you have filed anything.

If you saw it happen rather than it happening to you

A witness is not a complainant, and people confuse the two to their own cost.

Anybody may give information about a cognizable offence; you do not have to be the victim. A neighbour, a shopkeeper, a passer-by who saw an assault can give the information that starts an FIR, and in a great many cases nobody else is in a position to.

If you are then cited as a witness, what is asked of you is ordinary: your statement is recorded during the investigation, and later you may be called to depose. Two honest points about that. Your statement to the police is not evidence in itself — what you say in court is — which is why the consistency between the two matters so much, and why you should say what you actually saw rather than what you have since been told. And say what you do not know as plainly as what you do; an account that covers everything neatly is the one that is least believed.

If you are being pressured about your statement, by either side, that is itself something to report, and to report in writing.

Language, and the papers you did not write

A small practical matter that delays more complaints than it should.

Write the complaint in the language you actually think in. A complaint written in laboured English, copied from a template, that does not say what happened is worse than a clear one in Hindi. What matters is that the facts, the dates and the names are unmistakable.

Where a document you are relying on is in another language — an agreement, a message thread, a certificate from another State — have a translation prepared before you go rather than at the counter, and keep the original with it. And read anything put in front of you for signature, including your own recorded statement, before you sign it. If it is written in a language you do not read, say so and ask for it to be read over to you. That request is ordinary, it is yours to make, and the alternative is signing a version of your own account that you have never seen.

Mistakes that cost people the case

What to collect before anybody drafts

Your own dated account of what happened. Proof of identity and address. The complaint as given, with the receipt, diary number or postal proof. The FIR copy if one exists. Medical papers and photographs. Messages, call records and transaction records, kept in their original form. Names and phone numbers of witnesses. Any document central to the matter, with a certified copy where it is a registered one. Every application you have already made, with its acknowledgement. And, where there is a delay, the material that explains it.

The third door will also need an affidavit, and it is not optional there, so budget a visit to an oath commissioner into your plan rather than discovering it on the morning of filing. Anything not in English or Hindi should reach the file already translated, not handed over as it is with a promise to explain.

Our part of a police matter

Documents, and nothing beyond them. Nobody here is an advocate, nobody speaks to the police on your behalf, nobody appears before any court, and nobody can procure the registration of an FIR. What we do is the complaint written so that facts, dates and names are where they need to be, the applications to the Superintendent of Police and to the Magistrate as your advocate settles them, the affidavit and its attestation, the petition where one is needed, the cyber crime and missing person forms of complaint, translations, certified copies, and — on the other side of an FIR — the anticipatory bail and bail documentation.

What is argued, and whether to argue it at all, belongs to counsel. Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it. The directory is free to open and free to write through, it runs A to Z, and no listing on it was bought.

What we decline in a police matter

What we charge, said up front

Each document shows its own price on its own service page, readable before you order anything or speak to anybody. Notarisation, attestation and whatever a public office levies are shown apart from our charge, because that money is not ours and does not pass through us.

The whole figure is told to you before work begins and none of it is payable in advance. And on this subject in particular we will say the thing that costs us the work: the first complaint at the police station is something most people can write and hand in themselves, today, and if that is all your matter needs then that is what you will hear on the call — along with how to get the receipt that makes everything after it possible.