Courts and police are not recovery agents, says SC

NEW DELHI: With police continuing to register FIRs in civil disputes, Supreme Court on Monday said the judiciary and police are not recovery agents and that threat of arrest could not be leveraged to settle such disputes.

The remark from a bench of Justices Surya Kant and N K Singh came after it found that a purely civil dispute, involving a monetary amount between two parties, had been converted into a criminal case by the Uttar Pradesh police by registering a case of cheating. Additional solicitor general K M Nataraj said police ends up getting the stick from both sides.

If it does not follow the SC diktat for immediate registration of FIR on receiving a complaint disclosing an offence, it is criticised by courts, and if it registers one, it is accused of not applying its mind. The bench understood the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't predicament of police and said, "Registration of an FIR does not mean the person accused of the crime is required to be immediately arrested in every case. Police must apply its mind to the nature of the crime and whether it is a civil or criminal offence."

Justice Kant said, "Such misuse of the criminal law is posing a serious threat to the legal system for dispensation of justice. People think they can use the judiciary and police as recovery agents by instituting criminal cases even when the dispute is purely civil in nature."

The bench suggested that the states could appoint a nodal officer for each district, preferably a retired district judge, who could be consulted by police whenever they have a doubt about the nature of the offence - civil or criminal - reported in the FIR. It asked the additional solicitor general to deliberate the proposal and report back to the court.

In April 1 last year, the SC, in Sharif Ahmad vs UP, had ruled that "any effort to settle civil disputes and claims which do not involve any criminal offence, by way of applying pressure through criminal prosecution, should be deprecated and discouraged." In another case in April this year, a CJI-led bench had said, "Converting civil cases into criminal ones by police is unacceptable. If any such incident comes to light in future, we will not hesitate to impose heavy costs on police."