The Madras High Court has started an exercise to find a solution to a major complaint received by it quite often in the criminal jurisdiction. It has decided to end the practice of the police and the trial court staff blaming each other over filing and acceptance of final reports in criminal cases.
Justice N. Sathish Kumar has called for individual reports from all Principal District and Sessions Courts as well as the Chief Judicial Magistrates in the State, listing the number of criminal cases in which the police had filed final reports that were pending with the court staff without being taken on file.
The judge issued a similar direction to the Director-General of Police and asked him to spell out the number of cases in which the final reports had not been taken on file by the trial courts. He made it clear that the reports from the judicial officers as well as the DGP should reach the High Court by August 16.
The directions were issued while the court was dealing with a petition for a direction to the Krishnagiri police to complete the investigation in a criminal case and file the final report at the earliest. However, a government counsel told the court that the final report was filed on December 7, 2020 itself, but it was not taken on file.
On the other hand, counsel for the petitioner claimed that when his client filed an application for a copy of the final report, it was returned by the trial court indicating as if the report had not been filed so far. “It is to be noted that many cases are coming up before this court like this,” Justice Kumar said and decided to put an end to the problem.
He pointed out that it had been the common grievance of the police that though they file the final report on time, the trial court staff do not take them on file, citing one or the other reason. Therefore, to avoid such a situation, the judge ordered that henceforth, the staff must endorse the date and time of receipt of the final reports.
The judge also recalled that a Division Bench of the High Court had in the past ordered the police department to file the final reports online. Yet, the practice of returning the final reports and receiving them without any endorsement continued, he lamented.
