FIR in sex-determination cases maintainable, holds Punjab and Haryana High Court

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, April 18

An FIR registered for sex determination under the provisions of the Pre-conception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (PC-PNDT) Act is “clearly” maintainable, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has ruled.

Justice Jasjit Singh Bedi also made it clear that the aggrieved has a remedy of seeking clubbing of the complaint and the police case. The trial in the matter would, under such circumstances, proceed as in a state case.

The ruling came in a case where the counsel for an accused submitted that a court could not take cognisance of an offence under the Act, except on a complaint made by the appropriate authority. Pointing at the provisions of the Act, the counsel submitted that a complaint had already been filed. As such, the FIR was not maintainable.

The matter was placed before Justice Bedi after an accused filed a petition for quashing of an FIR registered on January 3, 2016, under the provisions of the Act and Section 120-B of the IPC at Khanna city police station in Ludhiana.

Justice Bedi observed an alternative plea was raised by the petitioner during the course of arguments that the trial should proceed after following the procedure of a complaint case, if the state or the FIR case and the complaint case were to be clubbed.

Referring to a High Court judgment on the issue, Justice Bedi asserted its perusal established that an FIR was certainly maintainable. But the final investigation report under Section 173 of the CrPC was required to be accompanied with a complaint by the appropriate authority for the purposes of taking cognisance.

It was for the trial court to decide whether cognisance was to be taken on the basis of the police report accompanied with the appropriate complaint.

Justice Bedi added the procedure under Section 210 of the CrPC was to be resorted to where an accused had been summoned in a criminal complaint and was also facing proceedings initiated on the basis of an FIR. The provisions deals with the procedure to be followed when there was a complaint case and police investigation for the same offence.

“A perusal of the provision would reveal that where there is a complaint case and a police investigation in respect of the same offence, the magistrate concerned shall inquire into or try the complaint case and the case arising out of a police report together, as if both the cases have instituted on a police report. Therefore, the alternative argument of the counsel for the petitioner that on clubbing of both the cases, the trial should proceed like that of in a complaint case cannot be accepted,” Justice Bedi concluded.

Can seek clubbing of complaints

Justice Jasjit Singh Bedi also made it clear that an aggrieved has a remedy of seeking clubbing of the complaint and the police case. The trial in the matter would, under such circumstances, proceed as in a state case.