In a strong warning against misusing criminal procedures, the Supreme Court bench of Justice M.M. Sundresh and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma held that a person cannot file a second criminal complaint for the same incident just by adding a new offence. The Court said that once a police closure report has been filed in the first case, and the complainant has not challenged it, a second complaint under Section 200 CrPC for the very same incident is not allowed.

The Supreme Court therefore set aside the Kerala High Court’s decision, which had refused to quash this second private complaint. The second complaint had been filed more than two years after the appellants were removed from the original FIR through the police closure report, and the complainant had never filed any protest petition against that report.

Facts:

Although the trial against the other accused had already progressed, the same complainant later added a new charge under Section 308 IPC (attempt to commit culpable homicide) and filed a fresh case against the appellants. Based on this, the Magistrate issued process, and the Kerala High Court upheld this action when the appellants challenged it under Section 482 CrPC.

Calling this a clear misuse of the legal system, the Supreme Court said that “the subsequent private complaint has been filed by the same informant, touching upon the same occurrence,” and held that the High Court should have quashed the case entirely.

The Supreme Court rejected the complainant’s attempt to rely on Surender Kaushik & Ors. vs State of U.P. & Ors. (2013) 5 SCC 148 to justify filing a second complaint in special situations. The bench explained that this judgment actually supported the appellants, because in that case the second complaint came from a different person with new allegations—which is not the situation here.

The court reaffirmed the principle from Surender Kaushik by stating, “it is quite luminous that the lodgment of two FIRs is not permissible in respect of one and the same incident.The concept of sameness has been given a restricted meaning. It does not encompass filing of a counter FIR relating to the same or connected cognizable offence.

“What is prohibited is any further complaint by the same complainant and others against the same accused subsequent to the registration of the case under the Code, for an investigation in that regard would have already commenced and allowing registration of further complaint would amount to an improvement of the facts mentioned in the original complaint.”

The Court added that multiple FIRs are allowed only when the accused give a rival or different version of the same incident. Since that was not the case here, this exception did not apply.

Ultimately, the appeal succeeded, with the second complaint quashed entirely.

Case details: RANIMOL & ORS. VERSUS THE STATE OF KERALA & ANR.