For the first time in the state, a zero FIR was registered at the Subedari police station in Warangal. The zero FIR is a document that can be registered by any police station for a cognizable offence, without bothering about whether the case is in their jurisdiction or not.
The FIR was registered on Saturday morning and was later transferred to the Shayampet police station.
According to police, the FIR was registered following a police complaint by a man named Boora Raj Kumar, after he approached the Subedari police after he was informed over the phone that his elder brother’s daughter, Sri Vidya, 24 years old, had gone missing. Raj Kumar had come to Hanamkonda for work and he was near the Subedari police station when he learnt the news from his elder brother. He approached the Subedari police station and Sub-Inspector at Subedari police station immediately registered an FIR which was later transferred to Shayampet, in Warangal rural district, where Raj Kumar and his family originally belong.
The move assumes significance after the Disha rape and murder case where the victim’s family alleged that they were made to run from one police station to another in order to file a missing complaint. The parents first approached the RGIA police station from where they were directed to the Shamshabad police station. The family said they lost a lot of precious time in completing the procedures, and that their daughter could have been saved if the police had filed an FIR quickly and started investigation little earlier.
The concept of Zero FIR was first suggested by the Justice Verma Committee in 2013 after the brutal rape and murder of Nirbhaya in December 2012.
In 2013 and in October 2015, the Ministry of Home Affairs had issued advisories to chief secretaries of all states and union territories, to instruct the departments concerned to compulsorily register FIRs. In these advisories to the states, the Home Ministry had made it clear that a police officer is duty-bound to register a case on the basis of such information disclosing a cognizable offence and FIR has to be registered irrespective of territorial jurisdiction.