Supreme Court: register the FIR at once, or IGPs face contempt

If you have ever been sent away from a police station and told to come back tomorrow, the Supreme Court has just put that in writing as a punishable failure, not a procedural hiccup.

A two-judge bench of Justice Muhammad Hashim Khan Kakar and Justice Salahuddin Panhwar has held that police are duty-bound under Section 154 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to register a first information report without delay once they are told of a cognisable offence. Delay, the bench said, will not be treated as a mere irregularity.

The warning is specific: further defiance may invite contempt proceedings against inspectors general of police, superintendents of police (investigation) and the sub-divisional police officers concerned.

What the court actually ordered

• The Sindh prosecutor general must file a report within two months covering every murder case from 1 January 2025 onwards, identifying which FIRs were registered more than 24 hours after the offence was reported.
• Trial courts must record a finding on the cause of any delay in FIR registration and take appropriate legal action, rather than passing over it.
• The court's earlier Muhammad Bux judgment on the subject is to be translated into Sindhi and uploaded to the court's website, so that complainants can read it in their own language.

The ruling came while the bench was upholding a life sentence in a 2012 murder case from Dadu district, in which the convict was Ali Raza Siyal. The FIR delay pattern in that record is what prompted the wider directions.

Why a late FIR matters to you

The time stamp on an FIR is not paperwork. In Pakistani trials, defence counsel routinely attack a late FIR as evidence that the complainant had time to consult, coach witnesses or fabricate a version. A delay of hours can cost a genuine complainant the case years later. It also lets the crime scene degrade, gives the accused time to leave, and buries the matter if no one follows up.

That is the court's point: the person harmed by a delayed FIR is almost never the police officer who delayed it.

What to do if a police station refuses

1. Put it in writing. Hand in a written application at the station and keep a copy with the receiving stamp, date and time. A verbal complaint leaves you with nothing to show.
2. Go up the chain. Take the same application to the SP or DPO office, or the district Complaint Cell.
3. Approach the ex officio justice of the peace. The sessions judge of your district exercises this power under the Code of Criminal Procedure and can direct the SHO to register the FIR. This is the standard route and does not need a criminal lawyer to start.
4. Use the provincial police complaint lines. Punjab (8787), Sindh, KP and Balochistan each run a complaint number and an online portal for police inaction.
5. Keep every receipt and reference number. If the matter reaches a trial court, the record of when you first reported is what rebuts the late-FIR argument.

This ruling binds Sindh most directly through the reporting order, but the reading of Section 154 applies nationwide.

See also our guide to online vehicle verification in Pakistan, which is the first thing police ask for in vehicle theft and snatching FIRs, and the NADRA fee calculator for the CNIC documents a station will ask to see.