Preamble

In accordance with the existing laws of the land, various Government and departmental orders, and guidelines such as those issued by the NHRC, certain procedures have been evolved with respect of citizens’ dealing with the police. For the purpose of easy understandability and wide reach, this Citizens’ Charter is intended to provide a simplified outline of such procedures. It describes, in simple terms, what the citizens’ rights are, what they can expect from the police and what is expected of them in turn. The Citizen’s Charter is not supposed to be a compendium of the existing laws or a commentary thereon. For that, the citizens must refer to the laws and interpretations thereof as contained in various judgments. (The use of masculine gender in the following is Standard English—unless specifically mentioned, the concepts apply equally well to females as well.)

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1. You will be given a printed receipt when you submit a petition in person at any police station. It will not be possible to acknowledge petitions sent by post.

2. You are entitled to make periodical enquires at the police station regarding the action taken on your petition after a reasonable time. Although, all efforts are made to attend to every petition as early as possible, expecting instant justice is neither practicable nor desirable.

3. If a FIR is registered on the basis of your petition you will be given a copy of the FIR.

4. If the FIR is not registered, you will be informed as to why it has not been found proper to register it.

5. In strict legal terms, petition enquiry is not the job of the police particularly when it relates to matter that do not have a reasonable bearing upon the occurrence or the likelihood of the occurrence of a cognizable offence or a law and order/public order problem. If police has been attending to such matters, it should be regarded as a consequence of a historical compulsion. As such, it falls within the realm of social service. It means that disposal of petitions at the level of police stations must be regarded as a socially acceptable and, above all, expedient solution to such problems of the citizens for which they think that, due to various reasons, the police would be able to provide them a reasonable degree of succor without the hassle of their going through the stipulated channels and departments. Such a disposal should not be regarded as a substitute for a judicial remedy. If one does not have faith in the system, he is at liberty to get his grievances redressed through the prescribed channels and departments. Therefore, those petitioners and counter petitioners who affix their signatures in the petitions register are not expected to question either the integrity or the motives of the police in having arrived at a certain solution.