The High Court of Karnataka has issued a direction that whenever private complaints are filed and a direction is sought for investigation by the police, such complaints should necessarily be accompanied by an affidavit of the complainant. Justice M Nagaprasanna has said that time has come to ‘nip frivolous registration of crime in its bud’.
The court said that the complainant who takes the route of filing a private complaint shall file an affidavit about the failure of efforts taken to get a complaint registered before the
police.
“There is a wide difference between verification and an affidavit. Affidavit is a legally signed and notarized document, whereas, verification is only the statement of the complainant that whatever he has said is true. The accountability of the two are entirely different. Filing a false affidavit can make the complainant accountable and open to legal proceedings, the verification would not.
Therefore, the magistrates before whom a complaint is filed under Section 200 of the CrPC in which investigation under section 156(3) of CrPC is sought shall not entertain such complaints, if they are not accompanied by an affidavit as mandated in terms of the judgments of the Supreme court in Priyanka Srivastava and Babu Venkatesh cases,” the court said.
The court also noted that there are several petitions filed challenging directions under CrPC Section 156 (3) by the magistrates without accompanying affidavits.
“It is such cases, inter alia, that have lead to docket explosion in the trial court and this court, as any complaint sans accountability can sometimes be frivolous, frivolous I say, for the reason that complaints are registered to wreck vengeance; giving a civil dispute a colour of crime; intentions which suffer from want of bonafides; to settle personal scores, inter alia. It is therefore, the complainants should become accountable for the registration of every crime,” the court said.
In the case on hand, petitions were filed challenging the registration of FIR on the basis of a private complaint, pursuant to the direction of the magistrate court. The complaint was against a retired Chief Engineer and others in respect to a lift irrigation project.