Order on FIRs welcome

The Supreme Court has established a key principle on the need for police transparency over First Information Reports. By insisting that police forces upload all FIRs, with some exceptions, it has opened up the path to clear information for people, specially complainants, on those accused of misconduct and misdemeanours. For too long, the police has been able to do as it pleases in filing FIRs and deciding when to make them public. This created a massive source of corruption, and also subverted the law enforcement system through deliberate opaqueness, from which even the judiciary wasn’t exempt. In insisting on strict deadlines, with some allowances for states with poor Internet connectivity, the court has done signal service to society in upholding its right to information.

FIRs don’t mean that those mentioned in them are automatically guilty. Transparency does, however, serve many purposes, including the accused coming to know of it in time and preparing a proper defence, which is also everyone’s right. But the exclusion of FIRs on sexual offences from the order could have serious consequences, with people accused of such perversions exempted from scrutiny. Where the court could help is to pass similar orders to ensure that at least verdicts in such cases are uploaded so that those convicted of sexual offences are named and shamed in public. The availability of time-bound information will also bring the police-judicial work under rigorous scrutiny as the huge time lag between FIRs and chargesheets will also become public knowledge. At one stroke, police forces have been made more accountable.