Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Friday quashed an FIR lodged against the customs officer embroiled in the Sonarpur assault dispute, after finding that the police failed to follow the mandatory preliminary inquiry requirement under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS).
According to the case records and submissions before the court, the officer had earlier filed a complaint alleging assault. The following day, the mother of the alleged principal assailant lodged a counter-complaint, which the police immediately converted into an FIR. At a previous hearing, Justice Suvra Ghosh had questioned the legality of this FIR. On Friday, after examining the state’s report, the judge noted that the counter-complaint was filed on October 25 at 7.25 pm and the FIR was registered the same evening without any indication of a preliminary inquiry.
The court observed that the allegations in the counter-complaint attracted punishment below seven years, a category in which Section 173(3) of the BNSS mandates a preliminary inquiry before FIR registration.
Justice Ghosh held that bypassing this statutory safeguard amounted to a clear procedural violation and allowing such an FIR to continue would be a “sheer abuse of the process of the Court”. The bench therefore quashed the FIR arising from the counter-complaint but directed the police to continue investigating the customs officer’s original complaint filed a day earlier and take it to its logical conclusion in accordance with law.