Summary: This article analyses a recent High Court order quashing a rape complaint and imposing punitive directions against the complainant. It examines how the Court departs from settled limits on quash jurisdiction, collapses investigative and evidentiary stages, and creates unequal procedure. The piece situates the order within broader concerns about due process, equality before law, and the treatment of complainants in sexual offence adjudication.
In PU v. State of Madhya Pradesh, the Madhya Pradesh High Court quashed a rape complaint against a senior advocate, accepted the police closure report as dispositive, and went on to impose further sanctions. Citing the complainant’s alleged “habit” of filing false complaints, it directed penal action for “snatching away the accused’s dignity” and ordered that any future complaint she files be subjected to a preliminary enquiry before FIR registration. Rarely does a single order collapse so many safeguards at once. It disregards doctrinal baselines and distorts evidentiary presumptions. In doing so, it created unequal procedure and displaced settled safeguards in sexual-offence cases.
The significance of the order lies not only in its immediate injury to individual rights but also in its systemic reverberations. That the order was passed under Article 226 does not insulate trial practice from its influence. Subordinate courts are bound by precedent and responsive to appellate orders. The doctrinal signals and cultural cues embedded in such orders travel downward, recalibrating criminal process across jurisdictions and normalising practices of hostility, compromise, and withdrawal. This article argues that the order departs from settled limits on quash jurisdiction and converts investigative and evidentiary assessments into conclusive findings at the writ stage. It shows how this move produces unequal and punitive procedure with serious implications for equality and fair process.
Doctrinal Evasion
As Bhajan Lal and Neeharika Infrastructure establish, quash jurisdiction is exceptional, to be exercised sparingly. Even when exercised under Article 226 rather than Section 528 BNSS, the functional overlap is clear, with writ courts increasingly importing inherent powers to justify pre-trial intervention. The Supreme Court has underscored that this power is extraordinary, never a forum for testing the reliability of evidence. If the FIR discloses a cognisable offence, investigation must proceed, and any assessment of veracity belongs to the trial. Therefore, High Courts exercising quash jurisdiction cannot conduct a mini trial at the stage of quashing.
When the police file a final report, including a closure report, the Magistrate cannot act mechanically. In Bhagwant Singh, the Supreme Court held that the Magistrate must scrutinise the report independently, issue notice to the complainant, and then decide whether to accept closure, direct further investigation, or take cognisance despite the police’s view. If closure is accepted, the complainant may file a protest petition. This safeguard ensures that termination of prosecution is not dictated solely by investigative discretion but is tested through judicial scrutiny.
The High Court in PU v. State of M.P. disregarded these baselines. It treated the police closure report as conclusive proof that the complaint was false. The report itself rested on the absence of injuries in the MLC, a forensic finding of no detectable male DNA, inconsistencies between the complainant’s statements and those of her husband and neighbours, an entry in the police daily diary noting no specific allegation on the date of the incident, and her supposed habit of filing false complaints. This approach is flawed at two levels. First, a closure report has no operative effect unless it is judicially accepted after independent application of mind, notice to the complainant, and an opportunity of being heard at the time of its consideration. The complainant is entitled to file a protest petition, and the Magistrate may reject the closure report, direct further investigation, or take cognisance notwithstanding the opinion of the investigating officer. By treating the closure report as dispositive, the High Court elevated investigative opinion into adjudicative determination, bypassing the procedural safeguards mandated by the Code.
Second, the grounds invoked were legally irrelevant at this stage. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that medical evidence is only corroborative and its absence cannot disprove sexual assault, particularly where there is delay in reporting. Contradictions in testimony pertain to appreciation of evidence and fall within the exclusive domain of the trial court. Omissions in police records, including the daily diary, similarly raise disputed questions of fact that cannot be examined by High Courts while exercising quash jurisdiction. Most troublingly, treating silence or the absence of an immediate allegation as proof of falsity ignores the settled recognition that victims of sexual assault may delay or withhold disclosure for reasons rooted in trauma, stigma, or fear. Nor can a complainant’s past conduct be used to discredit present allegations at the stage of registration or investigation. By converting disputed facts into determinative proof, the High Court effectively conducted a mini trial, a course the Supreme Court has forbidden.
The High Court collapsed evidentiary questions into a writ proceeding, using negative medical findings, silence in a daily diary, and contradictions in testimony as if they were conclusive proof of falsity. These are matters the trial court is tasked to assess, through the settled rules governing appreciation of evidence and the assessment of credibility, with statutory presumptions operating as safeguards. By treating them as dispositive at the threshold, the High Court bypassed the trial function and collapsed the evidentiary framework.
The most troubling move was the High Court’s reliance on the complainant’s supposed “habit” of filing false complaints. Even if such prior allegations exist, they cannot determine the fate of the present case at the threshold. Quash jurisdiction does not authorise evidentiary appreciation. Whether earlier complaints reflect fabrication or simply independent grievances is a matter for trial. To decide otherwise is to conduct a mini trial in writ proceedings. Doctrinally too the reliance is misplaced. Prior complaints unrelated to the present accusation cannot be treated as part of the same transaction, nor can they be said to influence or be influenced by the facts in issue under Section 4 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam. At best they are collateral, and the law has long rejected collateral character evidence as a proxy for truth. Parliament has gone further: through provisions such as Section 53A of the Evidence Act and its successor in the BSA, it bars precisely this kind of credibility attack, closing the door on indirect methods of judging complainants by their history. By invoking supposed propensity, the High Court not only exceeded its jurisdiction but also subverted the legislative policy that protects complainants from character-based disqualification.
Structural Consequences
The most troubling aspect of the order is its direction that any future complaint by this woman must undergo a preliminary enquiry before FIR registration. This instruction directly contradicts Lalita Kumari, which held that FIR registration is mandatory once a cognisable offence is made out, permitting preliminary enquiry only in narrow categories like matrimonial or commercial disputes. Even Section 173(3) BNSS does not permit such inquiry for rape cases, and even inherent powers cannot be used to override this statutory bar. Beyond illegality, the High Court created a person-specific carve-out that marks a constitutional violation. By denying one complainant the equal procedural protection of automatic FIR registration, the High Court entrenched structural disbelief, stripping her of both equality before law under Article 14 and dignity under Article 21. Once branded as “habitually false,” she is unlikely ever to secure FIR registration again, a form of disbelief converted into procedural command.
Compounding this, the Court directed the police to take “immediate action” against her under Section 22(1) of POCSO and Sections 240 and 248 of the BNS. Each provision penalises false complaints, false information, or groundless proceedings, but only with proof of intent and prescribed safeguards. Under the BNSS, prosecution for false evidence requires the court itself, after a preliminary inquiry under Section 215(1)(b) read with Section 379, to file a complaint if it deems prosecution expedient in the interests of justice. For false information to police under Section 215(1)(a), by contrast, only the concerned public servant may complain, not the court. Under the statutory scheme, punishment for falsehood in the criminal process can follow only after judicial satisfaction, a preliminary inquiry, and proof of intent. It cannot rest on suspicion at the stage of quashing. By directing the police to prosecute under Sections 240 and 248 in the same breath as quashing, the High Court collapsed these safeguards. Prosecution was triggered without the complaint or inquiry that the Code requires, collapsing accusation, adjudication, and sanction into a single judicial order.
This punitive drift has systemic consequences. It produces a chilling effect. Complainants know that a failed prosecution may not only acquit the accused but criminalise them. The deterrence here is not of sexual violence but of reporting itself. The result is that institutional failure is displaced onto individual complainants, who are made to bear the cost of weak investigations and fragile procedures. The order exemplifies a broader judicial tendency to prioritise convenience by clearing dockets over statutory and constitutional safeguards. Article 21’s protection of dignity was extended to the accused but withheld from the complainant, while Article 14 was compromised by person-specific disbelief and outcome-contingent procedure.
Conclusion
The order is not merely an error of writ jurisdiction. It reflects a broader institutional failure to treat attrition in sexual offence cases as a systemic problem rather than an individual fault. The MP High Court stated that the complainant could not be let off and must suffer the consequences of a false complaint, adopting a distinctly punitive tone that departs from constitutional adjudication. The Code accounts for the possibility of falsity by prescribing procedural safeguards and reserving determination of falsity to the trial process. By treating the police closure report as conclusive, the High Court recast closure as falsity and withdrawal of testimony as fabrication, short-circuiting the trial function. In doing so it subverted the constitutional design of the criminal process. The contrast is stark. A senior advocate receives judicial protection framed in the language of dignity while ordinary defendants continue to face wrongful convictions and procedural neglect without comparable remedy. Unless appellate courts intervene, such reasoning risks normalising convenience-driven adjudication and further erode the constitutional foundations of sexual offence adjudication.
Short Bio: Shantanu Pachauri is Assistant Professor at School of Law, RV University, Bengaluru.
Ed Note: This piece was edited by Nida Adeel and published by Tamanna Yadav from the Student Editorial Team.
