Criminal Lawyer for False FIR: Breakup Disputes in India

One of my clients recently had a case which I am explaining below and if you are stuck in such similar situation, here is what to do.

Note: Due to attorney-client privilege, I cannot disclose complete case details or identify the actual parties involved. However, I am sharing the essential facts and legal approach so that if you find yourself in a similar situation, you can understand the available solutions and legal remedies.

TL;DR: A consensual relationship that ends badly can still leave one side facing a police complaint, and the other side facing threats. If a complaint has been registered against you, anticipatory bail under Section 482 BNSS is usually the first move, followed by a hard look at whether the allegations disclose any offence at all. If you are the person being threatened, a written complaint and a properly drafted application are how the process actually begins.

The call came on a Tuesday evening in early April 2025, from a man who had already spent three weeks collecting names. Nikhil Joshi, who works in Pune, had been in a relationship with Ritika Sharma for a little over a year. It ended in February. By March there was a police complaint against him at a Pune police station, built on allegations and on messages that he insists were exchanged in anger at both ends. He had asked in two online groups for a criminal lawyer, gathered eight names, and could not verify a single one of them.

That is when the client approached the Chamber of Advocate Sudhir Rao. The first thing the office did was stop the informal back-and-forth with the other side, which had been running through mutual friends for weeks. An anticipatory bail application was prepared and moved before the Sessions Court at Pune, and the relief came through. Advocate Sudhir Rao's experience with these relationship-linked criminal matters helped secure the order in favour of the client, where the earlier, unstructured approach had produced nothing at all. A petition challenging the complaint itself is now before the Bombay High Court. Nikhil still keeps a printout of the first message in a folder.

Key Facts of the Case

• The relationship was consensual throughout and ended in February 2025; the complaint followed within weeks.
• The complainant and the client had been communicating directly, through messages, without lawyers, right up to the date of the complaint.
• The complaint was filed at a police station in Pune, giving the local Magistrate court territorial jurisdiction.
• The client had no prior criminal record and had never been arrested.
• Anticipatory
• Anticipatory bail was the first relief sought, and the Sessions Court at Pune granted it.
• Everything the two sides said to each other for weeks had passed through mutual friends rather than through lawyers.
• A petition asking the High Court to quash the complaint is now pending before the Bombay High Court.

That is the shape of the file. What follows is the law that applies to it, set out in the order you would actually meet it.

What offence is actually alleged in a case like this?

Complaints that grow out of a relationship that has ended rarely arrive as one clean charge. They arrive as a bundle. Which sections end up in the FIR depends entirely on what the complainant says in her statement, and on what the police decide to write down. In practice, the ones that turn up most often are these:

• Section 318 BNS — cheating. This appears where there is an allegation that money, gold or property was taken on some promise that was never meant to be kept.
• Section 69 BNS — sexual intercourse obtained by deceitful means, or on a promise to marry made with no intention of keeping it. This is the section that has replaced the older practice of fitting these facts into the rape provision.
• Section 74 BNS — assault or criminal force on a woman with intent to outrage her modesty.
• Section 78 BNS — stalking, which covers following a woman and also monitoring her use of the internet, email or other electronic communication.
• Section 351 BNS — criminal intimidation, for threats of injury, reputation or property.
• Section 356 BNS — defamation, where something was published or spoken to damage her reputation.

Two things follow from that list. First, most of these are cognizable, which is why the police register a case and start investigating without waiting for anyone's permission. Second, and this is the part that matters to a person on the receiving end, the entire case at this stage rests on the complainant's own words. There is no evidence yet. There is a statement, and a set of messages, and whatever the police have chosen to record. That is the material you are fighting at the bail stage.

Where the facts are contested and the account is one-sided, as it almost always is at this point, do not expect the investigating officer to sort it out. He is not required to. His job is to collect material, and the sorting out happens later, in court.

Section 482 BNSS: anticipatory bail is usually the first move

If a case has been registered and you have reason to believe you will be arrested, the application you want is under Section 482 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. This is the provision that replaced Section 438 of the old Code of Criminal Procedure. It lets a person who apprehends arrest apply to the High Court or the Court of Session for a direction that he be released on bail if he is arrested.

It is different from ordinary bail. Ordinary bail is applied for after arrest, from custody. Anticipatory bail is applied for before arrest, from freedom, and its effect is that when the police do come, they come to complete the formalities rather than to take you into custody.

What goes into the application matters more than its length. In a relationship-linked complaint, a working application sets out:

• The exact reason you fear arrest — the FIR number, the police station, the sections, and any notice or summons you have already received.
• Your version of the relationship and of its ending, in dated sequence, without editorialising.
• The fact that the relationship was consensual and continued over a period, which is a question of fact the court will look at closely.
• That you have no previous criminal record, have roots in the community, and are not a flight risk.
• That you are willing to join the investigation, appear whenever called, and not tamper with evidence or contact the complainant.
• That custody is not needed for any purpose the investigation actually requires.

On the law, the position is settled enough. The Supreme Court has held that anticipatory bail is not, by default, limited to a fixed number of days, and that it can continue till the end of the trial unless the court granting it imposes a shorter limit or the facts justify one. Conditions can still be attached — appearing at the police station, surrendering the passport, not leaving the jurisdiction without permission. Read the order before you assume what it does and does not allow you to do.

How quickly this happens depends on the court's board. An application can be drafted and filed within a day or two of being instructed, and interim protection is sometimes granted at the first hearing, with the final order after the other side is heard. Sometimes it takes longer. Anyone who tells you the date on which relief will come is guessing.

Can the whole complaint be quashed?

Bail keeps you out of custody. It does not end the case. To end the case, the route is a petition under Section 528 BNSS, which carries forward the High Court's inherent power earlier found in Section 482 of the Code. You ask the High Court to quash the FIR or the complaint.

The grounds are well known and have been set out by the Supreme Court in State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal. The one that does the real work in relationship matters is the first: even if you take every allegation in the complaint as true, and accept them at their worst, do they disclose the ingredients of the offence alleged? If the answer is no, the proceedings cannot continue. The others include a dispute that is essentially civil in nature dressed up as a crime, mala fide proceedings brought to harass, and a complaint that is barred by limitation.

There is a genuine difficulty here, and it should be stated plainly. High Courts are reluctant to interfere at the FIR stage while investigation is still open. They will often let the investigation finish and then consider quashing the final report. The exception is exactly the Bhajan Lal category above — where the allegations on their face do not make out an offence. If your complaint is of that type, the petition is strong. If it is not, filing early may only get you a dismissal with a direction to come back later.

Another difficulty is worth knowing about before you start. In Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh, the Supreme Court held that registration of an FIR is mandatory once information disclosing a cognizable offence is received. A preliminary enquiry is permitted only in a narrow set of situations. So "they should never have registered this" is not, by itself, an argument. The argument is about what the allegations contain, not about whether the police were entitled to write them down.

What if I am the one being threatened?

The same law runs in both directions, and a person on this side of a relationship dispute often has a case of her own that never gets made because nobody tells her how to make it.

Threats, stalking, abusive messages or the circulation of private material are offences under the BNS. If that is happening to you:

• Write a complaint to the Station House Officer of the police station with jurisdiction, and carry two copies. Hand over one. Ask for the acknowledgement on your copy with a date and a stamp. Keep that copy; it is your proof that you complained and when.
• If the officer refuses to record it or does nothing, the BNSS allows you to send the substance of the information in writing to the Superintendent of Police. Do that by registered post or by hand with a receipt.
• If that also produces nothing, a Magistrate can be asked to direct an investigation. An advocate can move that application; it is a short one, and the refusal of the police is itself the fact you place on record.
• Preserve the messages in their original form on the phone. Screenshots are useful. Screenshots alone, with the original deleted, are much weaker.

Do not delete chats to protect your own reputation, and do not delete them out of anger. In these cases the messages are the evidence, and whoever has the fuller record usually has the better footing.

What happens first, and in what order

When a matter like this reaches a chamber, the sequence is fairly consistent.

• First, a short consultation. Bring the FIR copy if you have it, any notice you have received from the police, the messages, and a two-line note of the dates you consider important. You do not need a neatly typed file. You need the documents you actually have.
• Second, a decision on immediate risk. Is arrest imminent? Has a notice been served? Has anyone been contacted at work or at home? That decides whether an anticipatory bail application is drafted the same night or whether there is time.
• Third, the anticipatory bail application. Filed before the Sessions Court or the High Court, depending on which is the better forum on your facts. Interim protection is the first target.
• Fourth, the long game. Once protection is in place, the quashing petition, or a reply to the final report, or the defence at trial. This part takes months, and sometimes more than a year.

You are entitled to a copy of the FIR once it is before the court, and you should get it before deciding anything. Read it yourself. Much of what people fear turns out to be less than they were told, and occasionally the opposite is true.

Fees depend on what the work turns out to be — an anticipatory bail application is one thing, a quashing petition plus a trial is another — and you will be told the figure before anything is filed, not after.

One honest note on limits. In some of these matters there is very little to argue, because the messages say what they say and the dates line up. In those cases the sensible course is damage control rather than a fight: a quiet disposal, a settlement recorded properly, no trial. You will be told that at the first meeting if that is what the file looks like. Filing a petition that cannot succeed costs you money and costs you standing with the court that will later hear the case that does matter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Facing a similar matter? Speak to a criminal lawyer in Delhi — Advocate Sudhir Rao appears in bail, trial and appellate matters before the Delhi District Courts, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India.