What happens the moment you walk into a police station?

Walking into a police station can be intimidating, especially when a complaint is not formally registered. In today's 'YOUR INDIA' column, Santosh Nair explains FIR registration, Zero FIR, the Lalita Kumari judgment and what citizens can do if police refuse to put a cognizable offence on record.

A woman arrives at a police station to report a theft. The officer at the desk listens, then suggests she “think it over” and come back if she is sure. She leaves without a written complaint, without a case number, without any record that she was ever there. To her, this feels like a small, forgettable interaction. In law, it is something else entirely: her right was quietly denied, whether the officer meant it that way or not.

This moment, the decision of whether to register a First Information Report, or FIR, is one of the most consequential and least understood interactions an ordinary Indian citizen ever has with the state.

Read more: The six words in the Constitution that grew bigger than anyone planned

When is registering an FIR mandatory?

For decades, whether an FIR got registered depended heavily on an individual police officer’s discretion. An officer could informally “verify” a complaint before deciding whether it deserved a formal record, a process that sounds reasonable until you consider who tends to lose out from it. In 2014, the Supreme Court’s Constitution Bench, in Lalita Kumari v State of Uttar Pradesh, ruled decisively on this. If the information given to police discloses a cognizable offence,........

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