Advocate (Dr.) Prashant Mali's Blog

What to do when FIR is not taken by the Police ? A First Information Report is the first legal document that initiates criminal proceedings. The first information received about the commission of a cognizable offense has to be noted down by a Police Officer. It is called as  First Information Report under Section 154 of CRPC. Cognizable and Non-Cognizable Offences: Cognizable offences  are offences where the police can arrest the accused without any warrant. In such offences, the police can Suo-moto take cognizance of the offence and it does not require any sanction from the court in order to begin the investigation. On the other hand,  Non-Cognizable  offences are those in which police cannot make an arrest without taking prior assent from the court. Schedule I of the Criminal Procedure Code clearly distinguishes which offenses are cognizable and which are not. According to section 154(1) of the Criminal Procedural Code,  an FIR can be filed only in cognizable ...

Police Closure Reports after investigation in cyber crime cases : 1. Art 21 of the Constitution guarantees fundamental right to life and personal liberty. This article of Constitution has been interpreted by the Judiciary with widest amplitude so as to include several other rights such as right to food and shelter, and other rights and most importantly the right to fair trial which includes the right to fair investigation. In Anbaizhagan’s case, the apex court observed that, ‘if the criminal trial is not free and fair and not free from bias the judicial fairness and the criminal justice system would be at stake, shaking the confidence of the public in the system and woe would be the rule of law’, 1 Trial should be fair to all concerned and ‘denial of fair trial is as much an injustice to the accused as is to the victim and the society. 2 2. The right to fair trial includes ‘Fair Investigation’, 3 Fair trial and fair investigation are pre-requisites to get justice which the parties de...

 Basic structure of legal argument (1) If conditions A, B and C are satisfied, then legal consequences X, Y and Z follow. (Major premise: legal rule) (2) Conditions A, B and C are satisfied (or not). (Minor Premise: the facts of the case) (3) Therefore, legal consequences X, Y and Z do (or do not) follow. (Conclusion: legal judgment in the case). As I mentioned in part one, the first premise of this argument structure tends to get most of the attention in law schools. The second premise — establishing the actual facts of the case — tends to get rather less attention. This is unfortunate for at least three reasons. First, in practice, establishing the facts of a case is often the most challenging aspect of a lawyer’s job. Lawyers have to interview clients to get their side of the story. They have to liaise with other potential witnesses to confirm (or disconfirm) this story. Sometimes they will need to elicit expert opinion, examine the locus in quo (scene of the crime/events) and a...