Picture used for representative purposes only
The police force in India is notorious for their inaction and unresponsiveness. Filing an FIR sometimes takes days, even months of running around. But one would at least expect them to be more conscientious in serious cases. So when a three-year-old girl in Varanasi got abducted, raped, brutalised and dumped in a local water body, it came as a shock to everybody that the police actually wasted time arguing and measuring jurisdiction.
The girl’s condition was critical, but the authorities delayed sending her to a hospital since the local police station and the local Government Railway Police (GRP) squabbled over who the matter should go to. After a day long dispute over jurisdiction, the police actually used a measuring tape to resolve the dispute as people looked on in disbelief. It was only a whole day after the girl was found, did the police register an FIR.
Oddly enough, the jurisdiction problem doesn’t exist, at least on paper. It’s a concept known as ‘zero FIR’, it allows for an FIR to be filed in any police station, regardless of where the crime took place.
In 2013, the home ministry had issued an advisory pointing out that the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) dictates that no proceeding of a police officer can be challenged merely because it does not come within his area.
“The delay over the determination of jurisdiction leads to avoidable wastage of time which has an impact on the victim and also leads to the offender getting an opportunity to escape from the clutches of the law,” the advisory states.
The advisory also states that police officers who fail to register a case when they first get information about it should be booked in a criminal case or face departmental action.
Sadly enough, this rule is hardly followed and the jurisdiction fight continues because most police stations strive to keep the number of crimes registered in that area low by simply not recording it. In fact, this isn’t the first time that the police have physically measured jurisdiction using an inch-tape.
In 2010, a man in Delhi, abducted and brutally beaten up by the family of his ex-lover struggled to get an FIR lodged as personnel from two police stations, Anand Vihar and Farsh Bazaar, fought over jurisdiction issues.
The story, carried by Mid Day, outlines how the victim, then 35-year-old Ravinder Pratap Singh, went back and forth between the two stations several times. Finally after hours of conflict, out came the measuring tape as the police arrived at the spot of kidnapping to decide upon jurisdiction.
The cops were at the spot till late at night measuring the area. Finally Anand Vihar claimed victory and the case was officially transferred to the Farsh Bazaar police station at 10.30pm.
Some complainants try to avoid this by directly lodging a complaint at the Commissioner of Police’s office, but they are inevitably directed back to the local police station, where they face the wrath and resentment of the local police for going to the Commissioner first.
A sorry state of affairs, indeed.
Image Courtesy: BCCL
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