The First Information Report (FIR) is the foundational document in Indian criminal law — it sets the criminal justice system in motion. Section 173 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS), which replaces Section 154 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, provides that every information relating to the commission of a cognisable offence, irrespective of the area where the offence is committed, may be given orally or by electronic communication to an officer in charge of a police station. Given orally, it is reduced to writing by him or under his direction, read over to the informant, and signed by the person giving it. Given by electronic communication, it is taken on record only on being signed by that person within three days [Section 173(1)(ii)]. The substance shall then be entered in the book kept by that officer — the entry is a duty, not a discretion. A copy of the information as recorded must be given forthwith, free of cost, to the informant or the victim [Section 173(2)].
Preliminary enquiry: BNSS has changed this, and the old answer is no longer the whole answer. Under the CrPC the position came from Lalita Kumari v. Govt. of U.P., where a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held that registration is mandatory once the information discloses a cognisable offence, and that a preliminary enquiry is open to the police only in a narrow class of cases and for a limited time. BNSS has now written a preliminary enquiry into the statute itself, on its own terms. Section 173(3) permits the officer in charge, where the information relates to a cognisable offence punishable with three years or more but less than seven years, and only with the prior permission of an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police, either to conduct a preliminary enquiry to ascertain whether a prima facie case exists within a period of fourteen days, or to proceed with investigation where a prima facie case already exists. Two things follow at the station counter, and I have had to point both out in Jodhpur since the Sanhita came into force. First, the outer limit people still quote from the 2014 judgment is not the period the statute works to for this band of offences. Second, where the offence falls outside the band — punishable with less than three years, or with seven years and above — Section 173(3) does not apply at all, so there is no statutory room for an enquiry before the information is recorded.
What to do if the police refuse to record the information: (1) Section 173(4) BNSS — the Superintendent of Police. A person aggrieved by the refusal of the officer in charge to record the information may send the substance of it, in writing and by post, to the Superintendent of Police concerned; if the SP is satisfied that it discloses a cognisable offence, he shall either investigate the case himself or direct a subordinate officer to do so, and that officer then has all the powers of an officer in charge in relation to that offence. (2) Section 175(3) BNSS — the Magistrate (erstwhile Section 156(3) CrPC). A Magistrate empowered under Section 210 may order investigation, but BNSS attaches two conditions the CrPC did not: the application must be supported by an affidavit, and the Magistrate must consider the submission made in that regard by the police officer before he orders. Section 173(4) also ties the two remedies in sequence — the application to the Magistrate is what the aggrieved person makes failing the approach to the SP — so the SP route is worth exhausting first and its refusal or silence worth placing on record. A point of nomenclature that is being got wrong since the changeover: cognisance on a complaint is taken under Section 210(1)(a) BNSS (erstwhile Section 190(1)(a) CrPC) and the complainant is examined under Section 223; neither of those is the provision under which police investigation is ordered, which is Section 175(3). (3) Writ petition before the High Court under Article 226 seeking a direction to register — of use where the matter is urgent, or where the refusal is at a level above the station.
Zero FIR and e-FIR: Zero FIR no longer rests on executive instruction alone. The words irrespective of the area where the offence is committed now sit in Section 173(1) BNSS itself, so a station cannot decline to record on the ground that the offence took place elsewhere; the receiving station records it, numbers it "0" and sends it on to the station having jurisdiction. That is the situation that matters most — rape, kidnapping, serious assault — where the person reporting cannot travel to the correct station. The same sub-section provides for information by electronic communication, which is the statutory footing for e-FIR, available in Rajasthan for specified offences through the State police portal. Note the condition in Section 173(1)(ii): information sent electronically is taken on record only on being signed within three days by the person giving it, so an online report left unsigned does not become an FIR on its own.
What the informant is actually entitled to under Section 173: to have the information read over before signing it [Section 173(1)(i)], and to a copy of the information as recorded, given forthwith and free of cost, to the informant or the victim [Section 173(2)]. Where the information is given by the woman against whom one of the offences listed in the first proviso to Section 173(1) is alleged — Sections 64 to 71, 74 to 79 and 124 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 — it shall be recorded by a woman police officer or any woman officer. Where that person is temporarily or permanently mentally or physically disabled, the second proviso goes further: the information is to be recorded by a police officer at her residence or at a convenient place of her choice, in the presence of an interpreter or a special educator; the recording is to be videographed; and her statement is to be got recorded by a Magistrate under Section 183(6)(a) as soon as possible.
Once an FIR is registered, the next question a family almost always asks is about arrest and bail. What the different applications are, which court takes them first, and what should be gathered before the first hearing is set out in our guide to bail matters in the Jodhpur courts.