Sending Complaint to Police Via WhatsApp Legitimate Under CrPc

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According to the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, sending a complaint to the police through WhatsApp constitutes a serious violation of Sections 154(1) and 154(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code and is therefore sufficient to begin an FIR.

In this opinion, a petition filed under Section 482 CrPc seeking to quash a complaint filed by the respondent that was communicated to the Police in WhatsApp messages was dismissed by a single judge court of Justice Javed Iqbal Wani.

Brief Facts of the Case

The respondent in this case was the sister of petitioners 2 and 3, the successors-in-interest of Javed Sheikh, who passed away in 1986, and the petitioner’s daughter. Since the petitioners and the respondent did not get along, they were worried about a legal dispute over several properties that the late Javed Sheikh left behind. Petitioner 1 had previously been challenged by a complaint from the respondent before the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Srinagar, following which Section 447 of the Indian Penal Code was invoked. This was a contest, and the complaint and any subsequent actions were dismissed.

A series of disputes between the two parties ensued after that. In that vein, the petitioner claimed that on one occasion, 12 to 14 people, including Naib Tehsildar Kothibagh, forcefully and unauthorizedly entered the petitioner’s property, broke open the gates, and threatened the petitioner. As a result, the petitioner filed a complaint with the Divisional Commissioner, who then ordered an investigation into the incident.

The respondent in this case filed the contested complaint after being unable to gain any remedy, and the contested order was upheld. In this case, the petitioners have maintained the on-the-spot petition on the grounds entreated therein while requesting its dismissal as well as that of the impugned decision. The petitioners are parties to the impugned complaint that the respondent herein filed under Section 156(3) CrPc.

Contention of the Parties

The petitioners’ lawyer vehemently argued during oral arguments that the respondent’s complaint was unfounded and without merit and that the Magistrate’s impugned order was made in violation of the rules established by the Supreme Court in “Mrs. Priyanka Srivastava and others vs. State of U.P. And Others, 2015” and “Babu Venkatesh vs. State of Karnataka, 2022.” The petitioners’ legal representatives also argued that the allegations made in the respondent’s complaint herein relate to the properties left behind by their predecessor-in-interest and that the complainant respondent sought to use the criminal justice system to resolve such civil family disputes.

Contrary to the arguments made by the petitioner’s lawyer, the complainant-respondent’s attorney argued that the respondent, in this case, had the right to file a complaint due to the criminal offenses committed by the petitioners here and had done so after adhering to Sections 154(1) and 154(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code.

The council cited the Supreme Court’s decisions in “Mrs. Priyanka Srivastava and Others vs. State of U.P. And Others, 2015” and “Vinubhai Haribhai Malaviya Vs. The State of Gujarat, 2019,” arguing that the law is no longer res integra and has been settled regarding the ambit and scope of Section 156(3) Cr. PC.

High Court’s Observation

The Court remarked that a review of the record would show that the complainant-respondent, in this case, appeared to have forwarded a complaint before the SHO of the police station concerned, as shown by the WhatsApp discussion, while keeping in mind the principles and position of law and material records of the current case. She asked the SHO of the relevant police station to register a case and responded by saying that the complaint had been documented and was being handled legally.

The Court took notice of the fact that she subsequently requested the diary entries and, in a similar manner, submitted five further complaints with the SSP in question, notifying him that the complaints had also been lodged with the SHO in question, who had declined to corroborate the same.

Accordingly, the Court believed that these facts essentially amounted to substantial compliance with Sections 154(1) and 154(3) of the Civil Procedure Code, and as a result, the complainant-respondent, in this case, can be said to have complied with the said requirement for invoking the provisions of Section 156(3) CrPc, so much so that compliance of filing an affidavit along with an application filed under Section 156(3) by the complainant-respondent also being sine qua non under and in terms.

“Based on the information and circumstances mentioned above, it is not possible to criticize the accused in presenting this complaint/benefit, the judge’s attention to it, or the accused’s order. Even if it’s miles assumed that the emails and WhatsApp chats cited above were not included within the complaint when it was filed with the Justice of the Peace, the court mentioned that the non-submitting of these documents before the magistrate could have no bearing on the application’s merits right now because the relevant documentation is already on record with this court.”

The court cited “N. Ramkumar Vs. The State represented by the Inspector of Police, 2023,” in response to the question of whether the exercise of inherent powers was justified in the information and circumstances of the case. It was determined that criminal proceedings should not be abandoned in the early stages and that quashing a complaint or FIR should be the exception rather than the rule because the court’s inherent powers do not give them arbitrary jurisdiction.

As a result, the petition was turned down.

-Pragati Sengar

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Pragati Sengar
Pragati SengarContent Writer

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