The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : CBI probe sought into fake FIRs

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 15, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

CBI probe sought into fake FIRs

Special Correspondent

No police official has been proceeded against in the case, says petitioner

CHENNAI: A retired police officer has filed a Public Interest Litigation petition in the Madras High Court, seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into reports of printing of fake First Information Report copies in Salem and Coimbatore districts.

J. Mohanraj submitted that a week after the arrest of two printing press owners, no police officer had been proceeded against. ``If the printer has been arrested, then the police officers who procured fake FIRs and misused them to hoodwink the subordinate judiciary also ought to be brought to book. The matter should be investigated and they should be prosecuted for abetting and using forged documents."

He alleged that that the fake FIR sheets were used by ``unscrupulous'' Station House Officers to black

mail persons accused of having committed a crime or obtain a bribe from complainants. Such cases were settled even before being brought to the notice of subordinate courts concerned.

Despite the contents of the FIRs disclosing cognisable offences, they were either ``withdrawn or settled'' without the knowledge of judicial magistrates, he said.

"The practice prescribed in the Code of Criminal Procedure for non-cognisable offences was indirectly extended to cognisable offences, with the judiciary being kept in the dark."

"There has been a flourishing trade in FIRs, and the only available markets were the police stations,'' he said.

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