How to file an FIR in India

Registration of an FIR is mandatory the moment a cognizable offence is disclosed. Section 173 of the BNSS sets the procedure; Lalita Kumari binds the SHO; and if the station refuses, three written escalations exist — the SP, the Magistrate, and the High Court.

Something has happened to you that the law calls a cognizable offence. A phone snatched on the road. A break-in at home. A relative pushed and beaten by a neighbour. A WhatsApp threat from a stranger who knows where you live. You walk into the nearest police station and ask for an FIR. The desk officer waves you off — wrong jurisdiction, come tomorrow, sit and wait, give it in writing in three different ways. None of that is what the law says is supposed to happen. The law says the station must register the FIR the moment the information you give discloses a cognizable offence, and must hand you a free copy before you leave.

This guide explains what an FIR is, exactly how to file one, and what to do at each stage if the police refuse — under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 with effect from 1 July 2024.

The law in plain English

An FIR — First Information Report — is the document the police record when they first receive information about a cognizable offence. Its statutory home is Section 173 of the BNSS [Section 154 of the CrPC, 1973]. The FIR is not just paperwork: it is what legally starts an investigation. Until it is registered, the State machinery is not on the case.

A cognizable offence is one in which the police can arrest without a warrant and start an investigation without a magistrate's order. The serious ones — murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, dowry death, dacoity, voluntarily causing hurt with dangerous weapons, most offences against the State — are cognizable. A non-cognizable offence (minor hurt, defamation, simple cheating in some cases) is one where the police cannot register an FIR or investigate without a magistrate's permission under Section 174(2) BNSS [Section 155(2) CrPC]. The First Schedule to the BNSS tells you which is which; if you are unsure, the SHO's duty register tells you.

The point most ordinary readers do not realise is this: where the information you give discloses a cognizable offence on its face, the SHO has no discretion to refuse to register the FIR. The Supreme Court settled this in Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh (2014) 2 SCC 1. Registration is mandatory. A preliminary inquiry before registration is permissible only in narrow categories — matrimonial disputes, commercial offences, medical negligence, corruption cases, and cases of abnormal delay. The BNSS has now codified a version of this in Section 173(3): for offences punishable with three to seven years, a preliminary inquiry of up to fourteen days is allowed with the prior permission of an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police. For anything more serious, the FIR has to go in immediately.

The other anchor of the law is what an FIR must contain and how it must be recorded. Section 173(1) requires that every information relating to a cognizable offence, if given orally, be reduced to writing by the SHO or under his direction, read back to the informant, and signed by the informant. The substance is then entered in the General Diary kept at the station. Sub-section (2) gives you the right to a free copy of the FIR, forthwith, at the desk. Where the offence is against a woman — the sexual offences now in Sections 64 to 71 of the BNS [Sections 354 to 376E IPC] — the FIR must be recorded by a woman police officer. If the victim is physically or mentally disabled, the recording is done at her residence or at a place of her choice, in the presence of an interpreter or special educator, the statement is videographed, and a Judicial Magistrate also records her statement under Section 183(6)(a) BNSS [Section 164(5A)(a) CrPC].

Step-by-step procedure

The procedure is the same whether you are reporting a stolen scooter or a sexual assault. The cleanest path is to walk in, give a clear written statement, sign the FIR after reading it, and walk out with a stamped copy in your hand.

Step 1 — Pick the right police station, but do not let jurisdiction stop you. The FIR should ordinarily be filed at the station with territorial jurisdiction over the place where the offence happened. If you do not know which station that is, or the offence happened in one place and continued in another, or it is the middle of the night and the nearest station is the only one you can reach — walk into the nearest station anyway. Section 173 does not allow the SHO to refuse on the ground of lack of territorial jurisdiction. The station must register the FIR and forward it to the proper station. This is what is called a Zero FIR — it gets the number "zero" because the receiving station has not assigned it a serial number yet.

Step 2 — Carry one identity document. Aadhaar, PAN, voter ID, driving licence — any one. Carry an extra photocopy if you can. The police will ask. If you are reporting on behalf of someone else (a child, an elderly parent, an injured relative) carry their ID too if available; an FIR can be filed by anyone who has information about the offence — you do not have to be the victim or an eyewitness.

Step 3 — Bring a written complaint. You can give the information orally and let the SHO write it down, but a typed or handwritten complaint that you hand over reads cleaner and reduces the SHO's discretion. Set out: who you are; what happened; when (date and approximate time); where (full address); how it happened; who else was present; what documents or photographs or CCTV references you have. Keep it factual. Keep it in your own voice. End with the relief you seek — registration of an FIR and investigation into the offence.

Step 4 — Read the FIR before you sign it. The SHO will transcribe your information into the FIR register and read it back to you. Listen carefully. Then ask to read the printed FIR yourself. If a sentence is wrong, if a name is missing, if the section under which the FIR is being registered is too mild for what you described, ask for it to be corrected before you sign. Section 173(1) requires that you sign the FIR; refusing to sign it after it has been read over is itself an offence under Section 217 of the BNS [Section 180 IPC], so do not refuse on principle — ask for the correction instead.

Step 5 — Take the free copy. Section 173(2) BNSS requires the police to hand you a copy of the FIR forthwith, free of cost. Do not leave the station without it. The copy will carry the FIR number, the date and time of registration, the police station seal, the sections under which the offence is registered, and a signature from the SHO or the duty officer. This copy is your evidence that an FIR exists. Photograph it on your phone before you put it away.

Step 6 — Note the FIR number, the date, the station, and the sections. Every subsequent letter, application, complaint, court filing, and follow-up call refers back to these four things. Save them in your phone notes. If you later need a certified copy from the court, or want to follow the chargesheet through the Magistrate's court, you will use this FIR number to track the case.

What to watch for

The procedure is short. The places it goes wrong are predictable.

The Daily Diary trick. The SHO accepts your complaint, makes an entry in the Daily Diary or General Diary, gives you a DD number, and sends you home. A DD entry is not an FIR. It is a routine log of events at the station. It does not start an investigation. If you walked out with only a DD number, you do not have an FIR. Go back and insist; if refused, escalate (see the next section).

"We'll register it after preliminary inquiry." For most cognizable offences this is not lawful. Lalita Kumari permits a preliminary inquiry only in defined categories, and BNSS Section 173(3) allows it only for offences punishable with three to seven years' imprisonment, with prior DSP-level permission and within fourteen days. For murder, rape, robbery, dacoity, dowry death, and the more serious assaults, registration must be immediate. If the SHO insists on inquiry for a serious cognizable offence, ask for that refusal in writing on the station's letterhead. Most SHOs will register the FIR rather than put a refusal on paper.

The FIR registered under a milder section than your facts disclose. The SHO chooses the sections. Sometimes a clear case of voluntarily causing grievous hurt is recorded under simple hurt, or a clear case of sexual assault under outraging modesty. You cannot force the SHO to record a particular section on the spot — but you can insist that your factual narrative goes into the FIR in your own words. Section corrections can come later, during investigation or before the Magistrate. The facts in the FIR are what matter most.

The SHO's narrative replacing yours. Some FIRs read like the SHO's interpretation of what you said, not what you actually said. Names get dropped. Sequences get scrambled. "He hit me with an iron rod" becomes "a scuffle ensued." When the SHO reads it back to you, every sentence is your last chance to fix this. The FIR you sign is treated by the courts as your statement; embellishments come at the cost of your credibility later.

Cyber, financial and matrimonial routing. Cyber-fraud complaints sometimes get sent to the cybercrime portal at cybercrime.gov.in or the 1930 helpline before a station FIR is registered. Matrimonial and dowry complaints sometimes get routed through Mahila cells or family welfare committees. These routings can be useful, but they do not displace your right to FIR registration if the facts disclose a cognizable offence. If the cyber cell or the mahila cell tells you the matter is being conciliated and an FIR is not needed, ask for that in writing too.

Delay in reporting. Delay in lodging an FIR is not fatal to a prosecution, but it has to be explained. If you reach the station hours or days after the incident, write out the reason for the delay in your complaint — you were taking the injured to hospital, you were in shock, the nearest station was thirty kilometres away, the SHO was not on duty. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that delay properly explained is no ground to disbelieve the FIR. Delay unexplained is what corrodes the case.

If things go wrong

If the SHO refuses to register the FIR, three escalations are available, in order. Use them sequentially — each step is a written application, and the next step expects a paper trail of the one before it.

First: the Superintendent of Police. Section 173(4) of the BNSS [Section 154(3) CrPC] gives you the right to send the substance of the information in writing, by post, to the Superintendent of Police of the district. If the SP is satisfied that the information discloses a cognizable offence, the SP shall either investigate the case personally or direct a subordinate officer to do so, and that officer then has all the powers of an SHO in relation to that offence. Draft a one-to-two-page letter setting out the facts, the date and time you visited the station, the name and rank of the officer who refused, and your specific request for FIR registration. Send it by Speed Post and keep the slip; or hand-deliver and get a dated receipt at the SP's reception. Keep a copy.

Second: the jurisdictional Magistrate. If the SP does not act within a reasonable time — typically two to three weeks — file an application before the Judicial Magistrate of First Class with jurisdiction, under Section 175(3) of the BNSS [Section 156(3) CrPC], seeking a direction to the police to register the FIR and investigate. Annex copies of your complaint to the SHO, your complaint to the SP, and the postal receipts. The Magistrate, on being satisfied that a cognizable offence is disclosed and that the police have failed to act, can pass a direction to the SHO to register an FIR. The Magistrate can alternatively take cognizance directly on the complaint under Section 210 BNSS [Section 190 CrPC] and proceed to examine you on oath under Section 223 BNSS [Section 200 CrPC], but the Section 175(3) route puts the State's investigative machinery on the case and is usually preferred.

Third: the High Court. If the Magistrate also fails to grant relief or the police defy the Magistrate's direction, a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution can be filed before the jurisdictional High Court. The High Court can issue a writ of mandamus directing the police to register the FIR and investigate. Article 226 has no precondition of exhausting subordinate remedies, but in practice the High Court will ask whether the SP and the Magistrate were approached first — which is why the paper trail from the earlier two steps matters.

Refusal to register an FIR is itself actionable. Section 199 of the BNS [Section 166A IPC] makes it a punishable offence — up to two years' imprisonment — for a public servant to fail to record information regarding offences against women such as rape, acid attack, and outraging modesty. The threat of a Section 199 complaint, mentioned in your written complaint to the SP, is often enough to get the FIR registered.

If a false FIR has been filed against you, the remedy lies on the other side of the same statute book. Section 528 of the BNSS [Section 482 CrPC] preserves the inherent power of the High Court to quash an FIR that does not disclose any offence or that is an abuse of process. The categories were laid out by the Supreme Court in State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal, 1992 Supp (1) SCC 335 — and they continue to bind High Courts under the BNSS.

Resources

Helplines.

• 112 — all-India emergency response (police, fire, ambulance).
• 1091 — women-in-distress helpline.
• 1098 — child helpline.
• 1930 — cyber-fraud helpline (financial fraud reporting within the first 24 hours improves recovery odds).
• 14433 — National Human Rights Commission complaint line; use this when the grievance is against a public official such as a refusing SHO.
• 181 — women's helpline (state-operated; numbers and routing vary).

Helpline numbers above are widely published by Government of India sources but call routing and availability vary by State. Always verify the current number on the official portal of your State police or the concerned ministry before relying on it.

Portals.

• cybercrime.gov.in — National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal; file online complaints for cyber-fraud, online harassment, and child sexual abuse material.
• ncw.nic.in — National Commission for Women; online complaint filing for women.
• nhrc.nic.in — National Human Rights Commission; online complaints against police inaction and custodial violations.
• State police portals — most State police websites allow online FIR filing for non-serious offences such as missing documents, missing mobile phones, and lost property. Delhi: delhipolice.gov.in. Tamil Nadu: tnpolice.gov.in. Karnataka: ksp.karnataka.gov.in. Statutory recognition for electronic communication of information now sits in the proviso to Section 173(1) BNSS — the e-FIR has to be signed by the informant within three days for it to be treated as a regular FIR.

Statutory references. BNSS Section 173 (registration of FIR), Section 173(3) (preliminary inquiry for 3-to-7-year offences), Section 173(4) (escalation to SP), Section 174(2) (FIR in non-cognizable cases needs Magistrate's order), Section 175(3) (direction by Magistrate), Section 210 (cognizance by Magistrate), Section 230 (right of accused to copy of FIR), Section 528 (quashing of FIR by High Court). BNS Section 199 (public servant's failure to record information against women), Section 217 (refusal to sign statement). Equivalent CrPC sections: 154, 154(3), 155(2), 156(3), 190, 207, 482. Equivalent IPC sections: 166A, 180.

Sample templates. Two ready-to-use formats are linked at the foot of this guide — a written complaint to the SHO requesting registration of an FIR, and an application to the Magistrate under Section 175(3) BNSS for a direction to the police to register and investigate. Both have placeholder fields you can fill in with your specific facts.

Outcome

An FIR registered at the right police station starts a formal investigation that can lead to arrest, chargesheet, and trial. A complaint that does not result in an FIR has no such effect. The free copy you receive at the desk is the proof that registration has happened. If the SHO refuses, the law gives you three written escalations — the Superintendent of Police, the Magistrate, and the High Court — and each step builds on the paper trail of the one before.