Shocked to know that the final reports filed by the police in 61,627 cases had not been taken on record by the criminal courts across Tamil Nadu, the Madras High Court has ordered that henceforth the final reports be filed in open court on working days and the magistrates issue an acknowledgement immediately.
Justice N. Sathish Kumar also ordered that criminal courts encourage the practice of filing final reports online so that the complainants as well as the accused in criminal cases do not end up facing the trouble of not being served with the final reports by the courts just because they were not taken on file.
Further, on coming to know from the Director-General of Police (DGP) that 11,900 final reports had been returned by the criminal courts citing defects, the judge ordered that no final report be returned for not being filed along with viscera, biological, serological, chemical or DNA test reports.
The judge directed the High Court Registry to circulate a copy of his order to all the trial courts. It was while dealing with a petition which sought a direction to the police to file a final report in a criminal case that the judge remarked that he had been coming across many cases of final reports not having been taken on file.
When he called for data with respect to such cases from the judicial officers as well as the DGP, Additional Public Prosecutor E. Raj Thilak reverted back to the court and said a whopping number of 61,627 final reports had not been taken on file and 11,900 final reports had been returned for defects.
In order to put an end to the practice, the judge ordered that henceforth the final reports be filed in open court and that the magistrates issue an acknowledgement with date and time. He also said that as per the Criminal Rules of Practice of 2019, the magistrates should not return the final reports for non-filing of viscera or biological reports along with them.
