MADURAI: Expressing concern over the delay in forwarding FIRs to jurisdictional courts, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has directed judicial officers and the district police heads to undertake a coordinated exercise to identify and rectify any discrepancies between the number of FIRs registered and FIRs received by courts.
Justice B Pugalendhi passed the order recently while hearing a petition filed by R Paulpandi, seeking to dispense with the production of a copy of the FIR registered against him by the Theni police for unlawful assembly and other charges in 2018.
Paulpandi moved the court for a direction to quash the FIR. Since the police had not forwarded the FIR copy to the jurisdictional trial court, he could not get a certified copy of the FIR, which stood in the way of his quash petition being numbered by the Registry.
Responding to the petition, Theni inspector stated that the FIR got mixed up with old records during renovation works at the station. He said the FIR was manually produced before the court on June 26, 2025 and a final report was e-filed.
Hearing both sides, the judge observed, “Retaining an FIR within the police station for years together erodes the integrity of the investigation and undermines the very purpose of judicial supervision.”