Access, Procedure, and the e-FIR
**Aditya Goel
The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (hereinafter BNSS), by replacing the Code of Criminal Procedure, recognises electronic communication under Section 173, which aims to digitise and revolutionise access. Section 173(1)(ii) of the BNSS provides that every information relating to the commission of a cognizable offence may be given by electronic communication and shall be taken on record on being signed within three days.
This article seeks to explore whether e-FIR marks a procedural revolution in India’s criminal law, or only a digital reinvention of the old exclusions? To that end, it examines two interlinked puzzles. Firstly, it questions the procedural ambiguity created by the three-day signature rule in the e-FIR provision. Secondly, it evaluates whether e-FIR has alleviated or merely reconfigured the entrenched social and bureaucratic barriers.
Three days to justice?
This provision under section 173(1)(ii) appears to be a safeguard against anonymous and frivolous complaints. On the face of it, the requirement seems designed to protect the integrity by ensuring the accountability of the complainant, particularly considering the ease with which electronic communication can be fabricated. This raises critical questions: Does the information, though genuinely disclosing a cognizable offence, end up as a mere diary entry? Does the rule destroy the FIR, or does it survive and bind the police duty regardless of signature?
Two competing interpretations emerge amid this tension. First, if the complainant fails to sign within three days, the information may be treated as a general diary entry under police regulations. As a result, no cognisance would be taken, no investigation would begin, and the complaint, thus, has no legally binding force. However, this interpretation collides with the apex court’s judgment in Lalita Kumari, where it was held that an FIR is a vital and valuable piece of evidence in the investigation process, and that the registration is the first step towards ensuring access to justice. The police must immediately register an FIR for cognisable offences without preliminary inquiry, except in narrowly determined circumstances. Therefore, if an e-FIR is disregarded due to this procedural irregularity, substantive justice would be displaced by a technical default, and thus, grave allegations would be set aside without the police ever being obliged to investigate.
A more coherent approach for the courts would be to treat the three-day signature rule as directory rather than mandatory. By this analogy, treating the 3-day rule as mandatory would privilege procedure over substance and would conflict with the constitutional requirement that access to criminal justice not be curtailed by technicalities. It is also essential to look at the ruling of the Madhya Pradesh High Court in Rajoo v. State of M.P., where the court held that merely the FIR was not signed is in itself no ground to discard it, and non-obtaining of signature is a procedural irregularity and does not vitiate the FIR. When the lack of signature is treated as a curable irregularity for physical FIRs, logic demands that the same approach should be applied to electronic FIRs.
One of the few and earliest jurisdictions to implement e-FIR was Delhi. In Tajinder Singh & Another v. Union of India, the Delhi High Court noted that for several types of offences, e-FIR was already permitted by the respondents. Delhi Police has permitted e-FIR for motor vehicle and property-related offences way back in 2019. This model relied on digital intake and back-end verification rather than a statutory physical signature rule. Crucially, these verification steps, including IP logs, OTP authentication, device fingerprints offer a traceable audit trail that is at least as reliable as a wet-ink signature. If a state could run credible e-FIRs without a three-day in-person signature pre-BNSS, then treating the BNSS 3-day rule as directory rather than a guillotine aligns with the access-to-justice aims and avoids erasing otherwise sufficient first information concerning a cognizable offence.
It is also important to understand and clarify the distinction between the law under the CrPC and the BNSS. Under Section 154 of the CrPC, the informant’s signature was taken at the time of recording, and courts treated this requirement as directory rather than mandatory, as discussed above. The BNSS, however, changes the structure. Section 173(1)(ii) requires an electronic complaint to be signed within three days before it is taken on record, creating a temporal gap between reporting and recognition. In other words, the debate is no longer about whether a signature is mandatory in the abstract; that question was largely settled under the CrPC, but about whether the information remains legally inert until the signature is supplied, or whether it immediately triggers investigation subject to later confirmation.
If a complainant fails to sign within the prescribed time, that lapse might affect the statement’s evidentiary value later, or even invite checks against misuse. But it should not wipe out the police’s basic duty to investigate a cognizable offence. The true meaning of this provision, however, will only become clear when courts are called upon to interpret it and align its text with the settled mandate that FIR registration is a matter of right and not discretion. This procedural dilemma feeds directly into the second broader question: who actually gains access to the system, and who remains locked out despite these digital reforms?
Beyond The Thana
For decades, the police station has been the gate through which ordinary citizens sought justice, and too often it was a gate that stayed shut. Women reporting sexual or domestic violence were met with humiliation and suspicion. The BNSS seemed to promise a technological leap forward by shifting this process online. However, a question remains: does this e-FIR system rebalance the power dynamics, or has the three-day signature rule merely shifted these bureaucratic barriers online?
The introduction of e-FIR represents an attempt to modernise access by enabling victims to bypass traditional bottlenecks of police stations. For women complainants, the ability to lodge an electronic FIR offers several advantages. In Delhi Domestic Working Women’s Forum v. Union of India, the Supreme Court acknowledged the degrading experiences that women face at police stations when reporting crimes, especially related to sexual assault. Survivors were interrogated in a manner that questioned their credibility rather than the offence, which forced them to relive the assault in degrading detail, and they were denied even the basic dignity of privacy or sensitivity. The Court described these experiences as a “re-victimisation” by the system itself. The Malimath Committee, while considering issues pertaining to complainants on sexual violence, observed that complainants are treated indifferently by the police and sometimes harassed when they go to them with their grievances. The digital platforms reduce the need for women to physically negotiate with the patriarchal spaces dominated by male police officers. The introduction of e-FIRs is likely to encourage more victims to report crimes, thereby improving the overall reporting and documentation of offences by women. However, this is true for urban women with internet access. In this limited sense, e-FIR does rebalance the power dynamics.
The objective of the e-FIR mechanism was to streamline the process of FIR registration and make it accessible to all citizens. Yet, this empowerment or accessibility is not universal. The efficacy of e-FIR has been constrained by India’s persistent digital divide. NSSO data reveal that only 24% of rural households possess internet access compared to 66% urban penetration. This disparity translates directly into differential access to e-FIR services, potentially exacerbating rather than alleviating geographic inequities in criminal justice access. The irony is stark: communities that are most likely to face police reluctance in FIR registration are least equipped to leverage these digital alternatives. The Oxfam India Inequality Report 2022 further reveals that digital access follows traditional caste, class, and gender hierarchies, with Scheduled Tribe households showing the lowest likelihood of computer access.
The requirement for an in-person, three-day signature rule further complicates the problem. For instance, the survivors of domestic violence may be able to initiate an e-FIR but still be forced into the police station to validate it, thereby recreating the problem associated with the traditional system. For rural complainants, the requirement could mean long-distance travel, wage loss and exposure to stigma. In effect, the signature rule restores the chokepoints that e-FIR was designed to bypass by making digital access conditional on physical compliance and deepening the very inequalities the mechanism sought to remedy.
The 282nd Law Commission Report had suggested that Legal Services Clinics in NLUs and law schools act as facilitators for e-FIR filing, particularly for marginalised communities. While this proposal can help bridge gaps in the short term, it cannot substitute systemic state investment in digital infrastructure. The very fact that the Commission looks to law schools highlights how digital divide concerns are being offloaded onto voluntary actors rather than being met by structural reforms. Reliance on students and clinics risks treating a constitutional guarantee as a matter of charity, rather than an enforceable right.
Conclusion
The e-FIR framework under the BNSS, 2023, is an attempt to modernise this gateway. Yet the reform is marked by contradictions. The three-day signature rule risks silencing valid complaints for want of technical compliance. The persistence of the digital divide means that while some citizens gain easier entry into the system, others, particularly those already marginalised, continue to remain excluded. If the objective of the e-FIR provision was to democratise criminal justice, such a digitalisation cannot be allowed to become a new site for old exclusions.
**Aditya Goel is a Student of NLSIU Bangalore
**Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily align with the views of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.