Kareena Eugene
In criminal cases, when people accused of any crime approach the High Court or the Supreme Court, the Court directs that “no coercive steps” must be taken against the accused as a relief for them.
Recently, a Bench of Supreme Court has called this practice against the principles of law which gives Police the right to investigate.
Supreme Court three-Bench consisting of Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, M.R. Shah and Sanjiv Khanna, laid guidelines for how a Court can deal with such cases.
The judgement states that, “(except in) exceptional cases where non-interference would result in the mis-carriage of justice, the Court and the Judicial process should not interfere at the stage of investigation of offences”.
The three main essence of the judgement was, the Police must be permitted to complete investigation, the power of Quashing FIR and that the Courts can pass the order on exceptional cases.
In a case relating to fraud and forgery of documents the SC Bench observed that the High Court should not have passed an order stating, “no coercive steps be taken”.
The Court observed that, “Police has a statutory right and duty under the relevant Provisions of the Code to investigate into a cognizable offence, and Courts would not thwart any investigation into the cognizable offences”. It also observed that, “the Police must be allowed to complete its investigation”.
The Supreme Court Bench held that, “First information report (FIR) is not an Encyclopedia which must disclose all facts and details relating to the offence reported. Therefore, when the investigation by the police is in progress, the court should not go into the merits of the allegations in the FIR. Police must be permitted to complete the investigation. It would be premature to pronounce the conclusion based on hazy facts that the complaint/FIR does not deserve to be investigated or that it amounts to abuse of process of law”.
On the power of Quashing an FIR, the Bench held that, “should be exercised sparingly with circumspection”.
It further added that, “It is only in cases where no cognizable offence or any kind of offence is disclosed in the First Information Report that the Court will not permit an investigation to go on”.
As for orders for ‘no coercive action’, the Bench observed, “Normally, when the investigation is in progress and the facts are hazy, and the entire evidence/material is not before the High Court, the High Court should restrain itself from passing the interim order of not to arrest or ‘no coercive steps to be adopted’ and the accused should be relegated to apply for anticipatory bail under Section 438 CrPC before the competent court”.
On another note, the Court made it clear that such orders for protection can be passed if the Court is convinced that the situation at hand is exceptional.
The Court on the matter of passing orders on exceptional situations held that, “Whenever an interim order is passed by the High Court of ‘no coercive steps to be adopted’ within the aforesaid parameters, the High Court must clarify what does it mean by ‘no coercive steps to be adopted’ as the term ‘no coercive steps to be adopted’ can be said to be too vague and/or broad which can be misunderstood and/or misapplied”.