A complainant can directly approach the High Court if a police station “rejects” the complaint, and there is no need for the complainant to first approach the superior police officer against the rejection of the complaint and later, if the superior officer too rejects it, to lodge a private complaint before the jurisdictional Magistrate, ruled the High Court of Karnataka.
The court said that the procedure of approaching a superior officer and the Magistrate, prescribed under Section 173(4) of Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), applies exclusively to cases of “refusal” to record information and does not extend to cases of “rejection” of a complaint by a reasoned endorsement.
Rejection on merit
When the complaint is rejected on merits, the complainant is entitled to challenge the legality of such rejection directly, including by invoking the writ jurisdiction of the High Court, without being compelled to exhaust remedies that are inapposite to the nature of the grievance, the court said.
Justice Suraj Govindaraj passed the order while directing the police to register a First Information Report (FIR) based on a complaint lodged by B.H. Nagaraju of Bengaluru, who was allegedly cheated by his brother in estate business. The police had given an endorsement to Mr. Nagaraju stating that “it is a civil dispute and it has to be redressed before a competent court”.
Interpreting Section 173(4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the court said that a “refusal” of complainant contemplated under Section 173(4) is for the scenario where the police officer either “does not receive the complaint at all, or having received it, chooses not to record it as required under law”, without entering into any adjudicatory assessment of the allegations. In such circumstances, the court said, the statute obligates the complainant to first approach the superintendent of police, and only thereafter, if the grievance remains unredressed, to invoke the jurisdiction of the Magistrate.
Different footing
However, “rejection” of a complaint stands on a fundamentally different footing, the court said, while pointing out that it presupposes that the complaint has been received, taken on record, and consciously considered by the police authority. The grievance of the complainant then “shifts from one of administrative inaction to one of jurisdictional overreach or erroneous exercise of discretion,” the court said.
In the present case, the court said, the station house officer has assumed unto himself the role of adjudicating the nature of the dispute, terming it as a civil dispute at the pre-registration stage, a function which is neither contemplated nor sanctioned by the statutory framework governing registration of FIRs.
Conflating the two
“This conscious ‘rejection’ transforms the character of the grievance and removes it from the ambit of Section 173(4) of BNS,” the court said, while stating that asking the complainant to still traverse the remedies under Section 173(4), firstly before the superior officer and later before the Magistrate, would “amount to conflating refusal with rejection”.
“Such an interpretation would not only dilute the statutory scheme but would also permit the police to effectively insulate their decisions from judicial scrutiny by the mere issuance of an endorsement, however erroneous or unsustainable it may be,” the court observed.
Published – February 04, 2026 10:05 pm IST
