When the Station Says No: Legal Remedies Under the BNSS for
Refusal to Register an FIR

A Statutory and Judicial Analysis of Section 173 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita,
2023, and the Citizen’s Right of Access to the Criminal Justice Process

Part I: Abstract and Introduction

The First Information Report (FIR) is the formal starting point of India’s criminal justice process.
It is the document that converts a citizen’s account of a crime into a state action, triggering
investigation, evidence collection, and, eventually, prosecution. Yet for decades, the single most
common complaint against Indian police stations has not been about how an investigation was
conducted, but about whether it began at all. Victims have routinely been turned away on grounds
of territorial jurisdiction, the perceived weakness of their complaint, or simple administrative
reluctance to add another case to a station’s docket.
On 1 July 2024, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (“BNSS”) replaced the Code of
Criminal Procedure, 1973 (“CrPC”), and with it, Section 154 CrPC — the old provision on FIR
registration — was replaced by Section 173 BNSS. The new provision was drafted against the
backdrop of nearly a decade of Supreme Court jurisprudence, most significantly the Constitution
Bench ruling in Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh (2014), which had already declared
FIR registration mandatory whenever information discloses a cognizable offence. The legislature’s
task was to codify this judicially settled position, close residual loopholes such as jurisdictional
refusal, and modernise the process for a digital era.
This article examines that statutory framework in detail. It sets out the constitutional and legislative
context behind Section 173, analyses the precedent-setting judgments that continue to shape how
the provision is read, and critically evaluates a significant tension that has emerged between the
BNSS’s own text and the Lalita Kumari mandate it was meant to codify. It concludes with an
assessment of where the law is likely headed and what reforms would strengthen it.

Part II: Background and Legal Framework

A. The Statutory Text

Section 173(1) of the BNSS casts a duty on every officer in charge of a police station to register
information relating to a cognizable offence, whether furnished orally or by electronic
communication, irrespective of the area in which the offence occurred. This last clause gives
statutory recognition to the practice of the “Zero FIR” — a complaint registered at any station and
later transferred to the station with territorial jurisdiction — which previously rested only on
executive advisories and judicial dicta rather than on the text of the Code itself. Section 173(2)
entitles the informant to a free copy of the FIR once registered.
Section 173(3) introduces something genuinely new: for cognizable offences punishable with
imprisonment of three years or more but less than seven years, the officer in charge may, with the
prior permission of an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police, and having
regard to the nature and gravity of the offence, conduct a preliminary enquiry within fourteen days
to ascertain whether a prima facie case exists before registering the FIR. This is the first time
Indian criminal procedure has expressly permitted a pre-registration enquiry on the merits of a
complaint, as opposed to merely verifying whether the offence is cognizable at all.
Section 173(4) supplies the remedy this article is chiefly concerned with. Where a police officer
refuses to record information under sub-section (1), the aggrieved person may send the substance
of that information in writing, by post, to the Superintendent of Police of the district. If the
Superintendent is satisfied that the information discloses a cognizable offence, they must either
investigate the case personally or direct a subordinate officer to do so, and that officer is vested
with all the powers of the officer in charge of the station. Failing satisfaction at this stage, the
aggrieved person may make an application to the Magistrate under Section 175(3) of the BNSS,
the successor to Section 156(3) of the CrPC, and the Magistrate may direct the police to register
the FIR and investigate.

B. Constitutional Anchors

The duty to register an FIR is not merely a procedural nicety; it has been tied by courts to
constitutional guarantees. Article 21 of the Constitution protects the right to life and personal
liberty, and courts have read into it a right of access to the machinery of criminal justice — a victim
denied even the opportunity to have their complaint recorded is, in a real sense, denied a fair
procedure. Article 14, the guarantee of equality before law, has been invoked against arbitrary or
unguided police discretion in deciding which complaints to record. At the remedial end, Article
226 empowers the High Courts to issue writs directing a police station to register an FIR, and
Article 32 permits the same relief to be sought directly from the Supreme Court where a
fundamental right is at stake, as the petitioner did in Lalita Kumari itself.

C. Legislative Intent

The push toward mandatory, jurisdiction-agnostic FIR registration traces back to the Justice J.S.
Verma Committee, constituted after the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case, which recommended that no
police station be permitted to turn away a victim on grounds of territorial jurisdiction. The Ministry
of Home Affairs followed with a 2015 advisory recommending Zero FIRs, particularly for crimes
against women. The BNSS’s stated objectives — reducing procedural delay, embracing
technology, and improving conviction rates — are explicitly cited in its legislative history as
reasons for writing Zero FIR and e-FIR into the substantive text of the Code rather than leaving
them to policy advisories that police stations could and did ignore.

Part III: Main Analysis and Case Studies

A. Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh (2014) 2 SCC 1

This Constitution Bench ruling remains the foundation on which Section 173 stands. The case
arose when a father’s complaint that his minor daughter had been kidnapped was met with inaction
until the Superintendent of Police intervened. The five-judge bench held that registration of an FIR
under Section 154 CrPC is mandatory once the information discloses a cognizable offence, and
that no preliminary inquiry is permissible at that stage. The Court drew a sharp textual distinction:
Section 154(1) speaks simply of “information,” without the qualifiers “reasonable” or “credible”
found elsewhere in the Code, which the Court read as deliberately excluding any threshold
assessment of the complaint’s plausibility before registration. It permitted a narrow category of
exceptions — matrimonial disputes, commercial disputes, medical negligence cases, corruption
cases, and cases involving abnormal delay in reporting — where a preliminary inquiry could
precede registration, but strictly to determine whether a cognizable offence was disclosed at all,
and it capped such an inquiry at seven days. Non-registration, the Court held, infringes Articles 14
and 21, and officers who unjustifiably refuse to register a valid complaint are liable to departmental
and, potentially, penal action.

B. State of Andhra Pradesh v. Punati Ramulu (1993) and the Roots of Zero FIR

Well before Zero FIR acquired its name, the Supreme Court held that a police officer receiving
information about a cognizable offence occurring outside their jurisdiction must still record it and
forward it to the station concerned, rather than simply refusing on jurisdictional grounds. Section
173(1) of the BNSS effectively transplants this judicially evolved rule directly into statute,
removing any ambiguity about whether jurisdictional refusal survives the new Code. This point
was reinforced recently when the Kerala High Court held that police could not refuse to register
an FIR merely because the complaint had been forwarded from a foreign country through
diplomatic or departmental channels rather than filed in person — a fact pattern that squarely tested
whether the old jurisdictional excuses had truly been closed off by the BNSS.

C. Anurag Bhatnagar v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2025)

This ruling addressed the sequencing of remedies under the new Code. The Supreme Court held
that a Magistrate should not ordinarily entertain a direct application under Section 175(3) BNSS
unless the complainant has first exhausted the two-tier police route: an approach to the station
house officer, followed, if that fails, by a representation to the Superintendent of Police under
Section 173(4). A direct application to the Magistrate that skips these steps is not void, but it is
“irregular,” and courts may decline to entertain it on that basis. Practically, this judgment means
the escalation ladder described in Part II is not merely good practice; it is close to a procedural
precondition for judicial relief, making documentation of each step — dates, officers’ names, proof
of dispatch to the SP — essential to a successful case before a Magistrate.

D. Imran Pratapgadhi v. State of Gujarat (2025)

This case tested the timing and scope of the Section 173(3) preliminary enquiry in a politically
sensitive setting, involving an FIR registered over a video posted by a Member of Parliament. The
Supreme Court clarified that where Section 173(3) applies, the preliminary enquiry must precede
registration, not follow it: if the enquiry reveals a prima facie case, the officer must immediately
register the FIR and investigate; if not, the informant must be told so that they can pursue the
Section 173(4) remedy. Significantly, the Court held that in cases involving offences based on
spoken or written words — implicating the fundamental right to free speech under Article 19(1)(a)
— it will “always be appropriate” for the police to exercise the Section 173(3) option rather than
registering an FIR immediately, treating the preliminary enquiry as a safeguard against the misuse
of criminal law to suppress expression.

E. Pradeep Nirankarnath Sharma v. State of Gujarat (2025 INSC 350) and Azad Singh
Kataria (Pending)

In Sharma, a retired civil servant sought a blanket order requiring a preliminary inquiry before any
future FIR could be registered against him for alleged irregularities in land allotment. The Supreme
Court declined, holding that Lalita Kumari’s exceptions are narrow and fact-specific, not a general
shield against registration, and that granting such a blanket order would amount to impermissible
judicial legislation. At the same time, in the still-pending Azad Singh Kataria matter, a bench of
the Supreme Court has orally observed that the Lalita Kumari mandate has been “abused a lot,”
leading to a proliferation of frivolous FIRs, and has signalled openness to revisiting the rigidity of
mandatory registration. Read together, these cases show a judiciary that is simultaneously
protective of the mandatory-registration principle in individual disputes and increasingly
conscious of its systemic costs — a tension explored further below.

Part IV: Critical Analysis and Evaluation

A. The Section 173(3) / Lalita Kumari Discrepancy

The most consequential conflict in this area of law is between the text of Section 173(3) and the
ratio of Lalita Kumari. Lalita Kumari permitted a preliminary inquiry only to establish whether a
cognizable offence was disclosed at all, capped that inquiry at seven days, and confined it to a
defined set of case categories. Section 173(3) authorises an inquiry into whether a “prima facie
case” exists — a materially higher and more discretionary threshold — extends the permissible
window to fourteen days, and applies it by reference to sentencing brackets (three to seven years)
rather than to the nature of the dispute. Neither the BNSS nor the accompanying Standard
Operating Procedure issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs defines “prima facie case” for this
purpose, leaving individual officers to apply an undefined standard with limited oversight.
This creates a genuine anomaly: an offence punishable with less than three years’ imprisonment
must be registered immediately with no discretion to inquire further, while a more serious offence
in the three-to-seven-year band can be subjected to a fortnight of preliminary scrutiny before an
FIR is even opened. Commentators have struggled to identify a coherent policy rationale for
drawing the line at sentencing brackets rather than at the kind of dispute involved, as Lalita Kumari
had done.

B. Risk of Misuse and Unequal Impact

A discretionary gatekeeping power, however well-intentioned, is only as reliable as the officer
exercising it and the DSP approving it. Legal commentary following the BNSS’s enactment has
repeatedly flagged that an undefined “prima facie” threshold, combined with a fourteen-day
inquiry window, risks becoming a tool for delay, for discouraging complainants through repeated
station visits, or for allowing extraneous influence to affect whether a case is ultimately registered
at all. This risk is not evenly distributed: complainants from marginalised or less resourced
backgrounds are typically least equipped to follow up during an extended preliminary-enquiry
period, to send a written representation to the Superintendent of Police, or to retain counsel for a
Magistrate’s application — meaning that a provision meant to filter out frivolous complaints may,
in practice, filter out the complainants least able to push back.

C. Two Competing Judicial Signals

Imran Pratapgadhi and Sharma pull in different directions from the pending observations in
Kataria. The former two decisions treat Section 173(3) as a narrow, rights-protective safeguard —
appropriate chiefly where free expression or an established Lalita Kumari category is implicated
— while preserving mandatory registration as the default rule. The oral observations in Kataria,
by contrast, suggest some members of the Court view the current framework as having been
“abused,” opening the door to a broader recalibration. Until Kataria is finally decided, police
officers, Superintendents, and Magistrates are operating with a degree of doctrinal uncertainty
about how expansively Section 173(3) may be read, which itself undermines the predictability the
BNSS was meant to introduce.

D. Toward Better Calibration

Several reforms would narrow this gap without reopening the pre-Lalita Kumari era of unchecked
police discretion. First, the Ministry of Home Affairs’ Standard Operating Procedure on
preliminary enquiries should be given the force of a binding circular and should define “prima
facie case” with reference to Lalita Kumari’s own categories, rather than leaving the term
undefined. Second, every decision to invoke Section 173(3), and every outcome of the ensuing
enquiry, should be logged in the station diary and be subject to routine audit by the Superintendent
of Police and the State Human Rights Commission, addressing the transparency gap that currently
allows the fourteen-day window to be used, in effect, as unmonitored delay. Third, as scholars
have argued, the more durable answer to the problem of frivolous litigation is not to narrow the
door at the registration stage but to strengthen the exit — empowering High Courts to quash
manifestly frivolous FIRs swiftly under their existing inherent powers and imposing real costs on
malicious complainants — so that genuine victims are not made to bear the burden of a system’s
inability to filter bad-faith complaints after the fact.

Part V: Conclusion

Section 173 of the BNSS represents genuine legislative progress: it converts judicially evolved
protections such as Zero FIR into binding statutory text, adds electronic filing for a digital-first
citizenry, and — through Section 173(4) and Section 175(3) — gives a refused complainant a
clear, sequential escalation path from the police station to the Superintendent of Police to the
Magistrate, and beyond that to the High Courts under Article 226. For an ordinary citizen turned
away at the counter, this ladder is not an abstraction; it is the practical difference between a
complaint that disappears and one that is eventually investigated.
At the same time, the introduction of Section 173(3) has reopened a debate the Lalita Kumari
Bench thought it had settled a decade earlier. The provision’s undefined standard, its inconsistent
sentencing-based trigger, and the diverging signals emerging from the Supreme Court’s own recent
decisions mean that the boundary between legitimate preliminary scrutiny and unlawful
gatekeeping remains contested. How the pending Azad Singh Kataria proceedings resolve this
tension will likely determine whether the BNSS is remembered chiefly for closing old loopholes,
or for quietly reopening one that the courts had long since closed. Until that is settled, complainants
are best served by documenting every stage of a refusal meticulously and using the statutory ladder
exactly as it is written.

Footer: References and Citations
● Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, ss. 173, 174, 175, 176, 230.
● Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, s. 199 (public servant / officer failing to perform a legal
duty).
● Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (repealed), s. 154, s. 156(3) (predecessor provisions).
● Constitution of India, arts. 14, 19(1)(a), 21, 32, 226.
● Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh, (2014) 2 SCC 1 (Constitution Bench).
● State of Andhra Pradesh v. Punati Ramulu, 1993 Supp (4) SCC 507.
● State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal, 1992 Supp (1) SCC 335.
● Ramesh Kumari v. State (NCT of Delhi), (2006) 2 SCC 677.
● Anurag Bhatnagar v. State (NCT of Delhi), decision dated 25 July 2025, Supreme Court
of India.
● Imran Pratapgadhi v. State of Gujarat, Supreme Court of India, 2025.
● Pradeep Nirankarnath Sharma v. State of Gujarat, 2025 INSC 350.
● Azad Singh Kataria v. Union of India, Supreme Court of India (matter pending).
● Ministry of Home Affairs, Standard Operating Procedure on Preliminary Enquiry under
Section 173(3), BNSS, 2023.
● Justice J.S. Verma Committee Report on Amendments to Criminal Law (2013).
● Ministry of Home Affairs Advisory on Zero FIR (2015).