Reforming the FIR system: Part-I

Every time a new inspector general of police takes over in Punjab, one of the first things he is confronted with by the media is the question of free registration of police cases or ‘FIRs’.

While most IGs have paid lip service to the issue, very few have actually seriously tried to turn this pipedream of free on-demand FIRs into a reality. Fortunately, even those IGs who took the idea initially seriously were forced to rethink soon enough. That is a good thing because if they had succeeded in implementing this utopian ideal, most of us would have criminal records today with an FIR or two against each of us having already been registered by now in one police station of Punjab or another.

Almost on cue, the media directed many of their questions during the first press conference of Amjad Saleemi, who took over recently as the IG of the Punjab Police – one of largest police forces of the world – to the problems associated with registration, or lack thereof, of FIRs.

Needless to say, just as the need for police reforms have come to occupy a key position in national politics, the system of the First Information Report (FIR) has assumed a similarly central spot within the police reform debate itself.

So what is wrong with the present FIR system and how can it be improved?

Before any police force can take action against an incident of crime, that crime has to somehow come to its notice. This is usually, though not always, done by the person or entity who is a victim of the crime. Thus the public needs a mechanism for victims or witnesses of a crime to be able to report that crime to the relevant police agency.

In the Subcontinent, the reporting of crime to the police is done through the First Information Report System. This FIR system is arguable and largely a product and requirement of Section 154 of the CrPC of 1898 (yes 1898, not 1998), the law which to this day governs how the police and the court deal with criminal cases.

There are a number of ills which arise out of the language of this archaic legislation, the very restrictive judicial interpretations of the relevant section of the law and the traditional police practices and procedures based on the the police’s understanding of the language of the law and the practice directions issued by the court.

The first thing that is problematic about this law as practised today is that it makes no distinction between a mere “claim of occurrence of crime” and the start of “formal criminal proceedings”. In foreign countries, people report a very large number of incidents to the police but only a very small number actually result in formal criminal investigations being opened by the police.

In Pakistan though, contrary to what the name implies, the FIR actually signals the start of formal criminal proceedings which is documented in various registers and forms at the police station with copies of the report distributed to many police and judicial offices and nearly always leaked to the press. Thus the registration of the innocuous-sounding FIR puts the entire criminal justice machinery into motion.

The second problem is that at this time the CrPC law makes a distinction between cognizable offences where the police can initiate proceedings directly and no-cognizable or civil matters where police cannot get involved. For example, if someone steals Rs5000 from your house, the police can take ‘cognizance’ of it and launch an FIR. However, if you have loaned ten million rupees to someone who now refuses to return it, that is a civil matter and the police cannot get involved.

Because in civil courts disputes tend to take a long time to get settled, the aggrieved party in a dispute of an otherwise civil nature sometimes tries to turn it into a criminal matter by deliberately misrepresenting facts in an application to the police with a view to make the case cognizable by the police. Thus the simple failure of a borrower to return a loan (a non-cognizable matter) is turned by the complainant with a few strokes of pen, and likely a hefty bribe to the police, into a “criminal breach of trust” (a cognizable matter) and a simple scuffle (a non-cognizable matter) is turned into an armed attack (a cognizable matter).

The third problem with the law is that it does not allow the police to judge the veracity of a report before registering it and thus initiating criminal proceedings only after it is sure that a crime has in fact taken place. The police are bound, as per judicial interpretations of the law, to register an FIR no matter how fantastic and unbelievable the complainant’s allegations.

The fourth issue with our current FIR law as practised is that it forces the police to register an FIR and launch criminal proceedings upon report of one party to the incident without giving the other (accused) party a chance to give their side of the story. This turns the whole thing into a race between two feuding parties as to who can become the ‘complainant’ of the FIR, thus bestowing the ‘victim’ status unto themselves and rendering the other party ‘accused criminals’ liable to be arrested at any time. In many cases, the complainant is actually the criminal and the accused turns out to be the real victim.

The fifth issue with the existing police practice in relation to the current FIR system is that according to the mindset of most senior police officers, a higher number of cases registered (compared to the same period last year, for example) in a police station equals rising incidence of crime in that area which, in turn, is presumed to be proof positive of poor performance by the SHO, the person in charge of a police station, to prevent crime in his area of responsibility.

Given the near-universal acceptance of this model of performance assessment among senior police officers, not to mention the media and the government itself which is always worrying about crime rate being out of control, every SHO has an inherent and strong incentive to hinder the registration of FIRs in his police station by hook or by crook. This leads to the practice of ‘burking’ which refers to hiding the actual level of crime in an area by denial of registration of FIRs even in legitimate cases of crime through use of one excuse or another.

The sixth and final major problem with the current system is that at present the law gives this most important power of registration of FIR to a relatively low-level functionary, the SHO. The principle of subsidiarity – under which matters were required to be handled by the smallest official closest to the facts on the ground – may have worked well in the 19th and early 20th century when the means of communication were so poor and administrative units so isolated from each other as to necessitate empowering relatively junior officers taking important decisions on their own. However, in the hyper-connected ever-shrinking world of the 21st century, it is no longer a necessity to leave such sensitive decision-making to a relatively junior tier.

Even more importantly, the level of corruption which at this time exists at the police station, and the extent of political pressure which are often brought to bear upon an SHO with a view to either register an FIR or prevent the registration of an FIR, is, on both counts, extremely high. Why should then a unit which is highly susceptible to manipulation be allowed to decide in which case criminal proceedings should be launched and in which cases no FIR ought to be registered?

To be continued

The writer is a freelance contributor.

Email: thereluctantcolumnist@gmail.com