Why not online FIRs?

Throughout practically all of history, and across kingdoms and nation-states, one of the most actively debated issues has been the responsibilities of those entrusted with enforcing the law and keeping order, namely, the police. India has not been an exception to this rule and even texts as old as the Dharmashastras, not to mention other works such as Kautilya's Arthasastra, discuss their duties. The common strand in all these discussions is duty or dharma. But when governments become weak and governance becomes flaccid, this sense of duty becomes the first casualty""including among policemen. This has become accepted as everyday reality, and therefore not worthy of mention, but every now and then some episode crosses the limits of tolerance. The country has seen this happen in the Jessica Lall and the Nitish Katara cases and now, even more horribly, in the killings of 17 children by two men, over a period of a year, not in some remote village but in a mostly affluent suburb of the capital city.

What made this possible was the simple ruse by the local police of refusing to register FIRs (first information reports) when parents tried to report their missing children""even though it is the citizen's absolute right to have such FIRs registered. This problem is not confined to Noida, it is a larger issue. The time has come therefore to provide citizens with an alternative mechanism through which they can exercise their right in respect of filing FIRs. The central purpose of this mechanism must be to end the local monopoly enjoyed by the station house officer (SHO) within his jurisdiction. One way would be to provide allow FIRs to be registered in the district magistrate's office. But this will still not provide a foolproof solution.

Therefore, the government should use information technology for enabling citizens to register FIRs by allowing online complaints""if income tax returns can be filed on-line, why not FIRs? The district magistrate would then forward a complaint to the station house concerned. The SHO cannot but proceed in the matter because the discretion to register a complaint would have been taken out of his hands. Frivolous complaints can be made actionable. Not only will this make SHOs more active, it will also have the side effect of revealing to the nation how bad the crime situation is in the country. At present, by not registering FIRs, the police are able to show a much lower crime rate than in fact obtains. Such an online mechanism has been recommended for income tax (to get rid of harassment by a local assessing officer), land records (ditto with the patwari), and other such matters where the citizen used to be at the mercy of some lower government functionary with a local monopoly of some sort. There is absolutely no reason why the same thing cannot be done for the police as well.

The second corrective step has to be to act on the recent court ruling about not extending to public servants protection from penal action by affected citizen, even if they step out of line by being corrupt. It is not enough to transfer or suspend the criminally negligent policemen of Noida; at the end of the day, a department will try to protect its people or to let them off lightly. There has to be an external pressure-point as well. In the Noida case, policemen who are proved to have been negligent should be made personally liable to legal action by the parents of the children who have been killed.