Clubbing of FIRs: Elevating the First FIR to a 161 CrPC Statement

Ravinder Singh Sidhu vs The State of Punjab 

The case at hand i.e. Ravinder Singh Sidhu vs. The State of Punjab is filed by way of a Criminal Writ Petition in the Hon’ble Supreme Court which deals with the issue of clubbing of FIR’s. The Applicant herein seeks for issuance of writ petition for clubbing of multiple FIR’s filed against him in each of the States to one district within the respective States. 

The Applicant namely Ravinder Singh Sidhu is the Managing Director of KIM Infrastructure and Developers Limited (for short ‘KIDL) an entity accused of floating two schemes for the allotment of developed land where customers were lured to be part of a lump sum payment plan or a deferred payment plan. The Petitioner has been in custody since 11.10.2018 pertaining to FIR’s registered against him in multiple states under multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC) and some local state legislation. 

The Court after hearing both parties and after careful perusal of their arguments observed that the law with respect to the issue in question is fairly settled that multiplicity of proceedings will not be in larger Public Interest. In case an FIR registered under any special legislation is merged with an FIR registered under the Indian Penal code, the trail and investigation of that particular case will be done according to the provisions of the special legislation and by a special court having the competent jurisdiction to try the matter. 

The Court while allowing the writ petition clubbed the multiple FIR’s into one district in their respective states. The court directed that the first FIR in each state shall be treated as a statement under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC). The investigation officer (I.O.) was further directed that he/she may file any supplementary charge-sheets in all the FIR’s after collation of all records concerning all the other FIRs that have been clubbed. If a bail is granted in connection with an FIR relating to a general offence under IPC, that may not automatically grant bail to the accused person in connection with the special offence’s FIR that has been clubbed with that of the General offence FIR. A separate bail application is to be filed for the special offence in order to get bail in the matter    

The judgment serves as a landmark judgment towards the doctrine of clubbing of FIR’s. The judgment attempts to avoid the doctrine of multiplicity of proceedings by clubbing FIR pertaining to similar offences into one. Furthermore, treating the primary FIR as a statement under section 161 CrPC serves to save the time of the courts in the trial stage. 

Full Judgement