The long fight to lodge a police complaint against a police officer

Nanded, Maharashtra: A Mumbai-based activist, Yashwant Shinde (51) has been working to get justice for others for the past three decades. Yet, he could not lodge a complaint against an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer who assaulted him in front of other officers.

Shinde claims that IPS officer Avinash Kumar attacked him on December 27, 2019. “I had gone to his office to file my first appeal on a right to information [RTI] application regarding the alleged fake recruitment of a female police officer in one of the police stations in Mumbai. Instead of getting a reply or an opportunity to file my first appeal, I was assaulted,” Shinde tells 101Reporters.

“Kumar jumped from his chair onto the table, crushing the national flag and a copy of the Indian Constitution. His only intent was to hit me and he was successful in that. The other officers tried to calm him down and save me from the assault, but that did not help. All this because I had filed an RTI application, which could have exposed corruption in the police system,” Shinde says.

Describing his ordeal, Shinde says he went straight to the hospital after the incident as he had suffered head injuries and was bleeding. “I simply asked the doctor to clean my wounds and prescribe medicines, but he said I should be admitted and kept under observation because the bleeding from my head could lead to blood clotting. I agreed and got admitted to the hospital.”

He tried to lodge a police complaint by calling police helpline 100, and explained the entire incident on a four-minute call. However, his complaint was not registered. “Instead, I faced pressure to not to go ahead with my attempts to lodge the complaint in the four days that I stayed in the hospital,” he notes.

As referenced by Devika Prasad, who heads the Police Reforms Programme at the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) — Data from the Status of Policing in India Report 2025 shows that a large share of police personnel believe most complaints against the police are “false and frivolous,” and that reporting against senior officers happens rarely. This scepticism within the force can help contextualise why Shinde’s attempt to register a straightforward assault complaint via a helpline call was dismissed as a ‘blank’ call. It’s a pattern the report associates with deeper resistance within police institutions to acknowledging internal grievances.

However, Shinde persisted by meeting several people on January 4, 2020, including the then Mumbai Police Commissioner Sanjay Barve and other senior officers. All of them assured him of proper action, but nothing really solidified. “To know the status of my complaint that I tried to lodge using the telephone helpline, I filed an RTI and got to know that my call was fed as a blank call. They said that during the entire four-minute call, I did not speak anything,” says Shinde.

He also alleges that he was charged with two false cases to stop him from his pursuit of justice. “One was for causing havoc in the workplace. The second was defamation case. They accused me of lying about the police assault, needlessly wasting the police department’s time and resources. No police enquiry was done to prove any of that. After all, they have the power to do anything.”

Nevertheless, Shinde’s lawyer fought the case well and the medical officer who had treated him also told the court that his injuries could only be caused if the assault was real and that one cannot fabricate such wounds.

A positive thing that emerged for Shinde was that Barve filed a document stating that Kumar was an unfit police officer and he should be removed from the force as soon as possible. Barve also accused Kumar’s superior officer of trying to protect him, despite proven cases of misconduct against him. 

“The judge asked the police station to fetch another inquiry report. However, my legal team and I questioned the decision because a police officer himself is the accused in the case, so the police station’s report cannot be trusted as completely unbiased. Our stand was ‘either register the FIR or allow us to take the matter to a higher court’,” shares Shinde.

Eventually Shinde approached the Bombay High Court (HC) around eight months ago. “The HC advised me to go to the district sessions court and told me to come back if nothing turned up there. It has been a few years, but the sessions court proceedings are still going on. The sessions court judge recently released a statement asking why IPS Kumar has not appeared before the court for questioning yet.”

Shinde’s family consists of his mother, wife and two children who study in colleges in Mumbai. To combat the financial toll of the court proceedings, he earns through the donations given to him for his social work where he helps other people in dealing with police stations and government bodies. He also rents out a space for some secondary income.

A former pracharak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Shinde was also in the news when he filed a sworn affidavit to the Nanded court in 2022 pointing to the role of RSS and Vishva Hindu Parishad members in the April 2006 Nanded bomb blast case.

Lawyer’s take

Advocate MA Khan got involved in Shinde’s case as his legal representative since the beginning. “We proposed to file an FIR against the accused for attempt to murder in the court dealing with the case at the time, which was the metropolitan magistrate. An eyewitness and a medical examiner [who was a member of the medical team that had treated Shinde] had given their testimonies, backing my client’s story,” Advocate Khan says.

“The metropolitan magistrate had conducted an enquiry, which convinced them that our case had grounds to be considered legitimate. However, since the accused in this case is an IPS officer, a public servant, we are required by law to sanction permission from his employer to prosecute the said public servant. We have received no such sanction as of yet. And thus, the lower court [metropolitan magistrate] had rejected our request,” he explains. Meanwhile, they decided to file a revision against the hearing (of the lower court) at the district sessions court, which was a line of action the Bombay HC also advised them to follow. 

The SPIR emphasises that police perceptions about judicial oversight and complaints against officers can influence how accountability processes play out in practice. The report notes that police attitudes toward internal review and external scrutiny are often shaped by entrenched beliefs about professional autonomy and fear of repercussions.

“But the revision took some time as the proposed accused is required to show up in the court, which he has not done so far. There was a brief confusion with a namesake of the proposed accused as well. Very recently, within the previous week or so, the sessions court has notified the office of the Director-General of Police of Maharashtra asking him to clarify where the proposed accused is currently posted. But we have not heard anything from him so far,” says Advocate Khan.

Despite the delays and court proceedings spanning multiple years, the advocate does not think there is any question of biased foul play here. The proposed accused being a public officer bears no special significance, according to him. 

“Under the Indian law, it does not matter if the case is against a public servant or a general citizen. Whether the accused or complainant is a public servant does not give the case any special attention. Therefore, we cannot blame the delays on that. There can be many reasons causing such delays,” he says.

“Our main point against the proposed accused is that his act in question does not fall under official duty. Whether you are an IPS officer or a constable, you do not have the right to physically assault anyone. Who gave you that authority,” Advocate Khan asks. He further delineates that while the public perception might say otherwise, in his experience, such cases do not influence the behaviour of the advocates and the judges involved in any manner.

(Saurabh Sharma & Tunir Biswas are freelance journalists and members of 101Reporters.) 

This story has been produced by 101Reporters, an independent news agency with a network of 3,000+ freelance journalists across the country, in collaboration with Crime & Punishment, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.