FIR Quashing Under Section 528 BNSS: When Is It Possible?

The short answer

Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 gives the High Court inherent power to make orders to give effect to the Code, to prevent abuse of the process of any court, and to secure the ends of justice. It occupies the field that Section 482 of the CrPC occupied.

A petition to quash an FIR (or a criminal complaint) is one use of that power. It is exceptional.

The working map remains the categories discussed in State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal 1992 Supp (1) SCC 335 — among them:

• allegations that, even taken at face value and accepted in full, do not disclose an offence;
• a statutory bar to the proceeding;
• a proceeding that is manifestly attended with mala fides, or instituted with an ulterior motive;
• other well-known heads the Court listed.

Those are tests, not a paragraph to copy.

This is general information about Hyderabad and Telangana practice. It is not a warranty that any FIR will be quashed.

What quashing is not

• It is not a mini-trial. The High Court does not weigh which witness is lying on affidavits as a matter of course.
• It is not the right first step in every FIR because the accused is “respectable”.
• It is not a substitute for bail where the live question is custody.
• It is not done by taking an old 482 petition and changing the section number to 528.

Investigation, charge-sheet, discharge and trial remain the ordinary path. See what to do after an FIR.

When a petition may still be the right question

Where the FIR, on its own words, does not make out the offence alleged; where a civil dispute has been given a criminal colour without the ingredients of the crime; where a statutory bar is clear on the paper. Even then, the facts have to be on the paper, not in the client’s oral grievance.

Do not file to “send a message”. The High Court of Telangana reads the FIR.

Related: criminal law practice. Contact with the FIR and the complaint, not a chronology of emotion.

Nothing in this article is a warranty of quashing or a direction to ignore investigation.