Harassment Complaint vs FIR: What a Student Can Do

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 written complaint to the police is not the same thing as a harassment complaint registered as an FIR. Police can register an FIR only if the complaint discloses a cognizable offence, and a student named in such a complaint cannot be debarred from university or have a career destroyed by anyone's rank, influence or connections. The proper response is a written, documented reply through the correct channel, not an apology or a phone argument.

Rohan Kulkarni had an exam the next morning when the calls started. An unknown number, twice, both times missed. When he called back after class, the line was dead. His friend Siddharth Nair had taken the same call and got a message: a police complaint had been given against them.

The complaint was dated 9 April 2025. It came from a classmate, Ananya Deshmukh. She said an unknown person had sent her abusive and threatening messages on social media, and gave Rohan's and Siddharth's names and phone numbers as people connected to that account. There was no FIR number anywhere on the document.

Then came the phone call to her father. He said he served in the Indian Navy, that the matter would go "all the way to the Prime Minister", and that he would ruin their careers. Rohan and Siddharth debated apologising just to make it stop.

They went to the Chamber of Advocate Sudhir Rao instead. The office read the complaint line by line, filed a structured written reply at the police station and a separate representation before the university registrar. No FIR was registered, and the university closed its internal inquiry without imposing any penalty. Advocate Sudhir Rao's expertise in this domain helped secure the order in favour of the client.

Only the client's account is available here. The complainant's version is not on record.

Key Facts of the Case

• A written complaint dated 9 April 2025 was submitted to the police, alleging abusive and threatening social media messages from an unidentified account.
• The complaint named the client and his friend, and mentioned their phone numbers, but carried no FIR number, no crime number and no registration endorsement.
• The complainant's father identified himself as a serving officer in the Indian Navy and threatened the students'
• The complainant's father identified himself as a serving officer in the Indian Navy and threatened the students' careers, according to the client's account.
• No FIR number, crime number or registration endorsement appears anywhere on the complaint.
• Neither of the two students had been called to the police station, arrested or formally named as an accused before the university was approached.
• The police station received a written reply, and the university registrar received a separate written representation.
• No FIR was registered and the university closed its internal inquiry without imposing any penalty.

What is missing from the record is anything from the complainant's side. There is no explanation of what connected the two students to the account that sent the messages, no platform data, no forensic report. That gap matters legally, and it is why the analysis below is tied to the facts as they stand.

Does a police complaint mean an FIR has been registered against you?

No. This is the confusion that sits at the centre of almost every case like this one, and it decides the strategy.

Under Section 173 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 — the provision that replaced Section 154 of the old Code of Criminal Procedure — a police officer is obliged to register an FIR only when the information discloses a cognizable offence. That obligation is not discretionary. The Supreme Court in Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh settled that registration is mandatory when a cognizable offence is made out, and that a preliminary enquiry is the exception, not the rule.

The flip side of that same rule is what mattered here. If the information does not disclose a cognizable offence, there is nothing to register. A written complaint handed across a counter is simply information. It can be entered in the station diary. It can be the subject of a limited preliminary enquiry where the BNSS permits one and a senior officer has cleared it. What it cannot do, on its own, is acquire the label "FIR".

The complainant's father called it a police complaint and treated it as a conviction. Those are two different things, and the distance between them is the entire case.

"Harassment complaint" is not a legal category

People talk about a harassment complaint the way they talk about a "cyber case". Neither phrase exists in a statute. What exists is a set of specific offences, and whether the complaint discloses one depends on what was actually said and sent.

On the facts described — abusive and threatening messages sent from a social media account — the provisions that would ordinarily be in play are:

• Section 351, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, criminal intimidation, where there is a threat of injury to person, reputation or property. This replaced Section 503 IPC.
• Section 352, BNS, intentional insult with intent to provoke a breach of the peace — the old Section 504 IPC.
• Section 78, BNS, stalking, where the pattern of conduct fits the elements of that offence. Section 79, BNS, covers words or acts intended to insult the modesty of a woman.
• Sections 66C and 66D of the Information Technology Act, 2000, where someone has used another person's identity or impersonated them through a computer resource.
• Section 67, IT Act, if what was published was obscene material in electronic form.
• Section 66E, IT Act, where there has been a violation of privacy by capturing or publishing images.

Two things follow. First, none of these attaches to a person merely because their phone number appears in a complaint. They attach to conduct. Second, if the account was fake or impersonating, the actual offence may have been committed against the person whose identity was used — which is a separate line of enquiry the police are entitled to run, and which the named students may want pursued.

What a name in a complaint does and does not do

Being named in a written complaint, without more, does not make a person an accused. An accused is a person against whom an FIR has been registered or a charge-sheet filed. A complaint that lists two names and two phone numbers as "connected to" an account is an allegation that requires evidence to become anything.

The police cannot arrest on that basis. They cannot summon a person to the station and treat them as an accused without following the BNSS. If the account is genuinely not connected to the student, the correct police outcome is a closure report recording that no material was found; the correct outcome is not a charge-sheet built on inconvenience.

What your rights are at the police station

• A confession made to a police officer is not admissible against an accused. Section 23 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 carries forward the old bar in the Evidence Act.
• Article 20(3) of the Constitution protects you from being compelled to be a witness against yourself.
• Statements made to police during investigation are recorded under the BNSS provision that replaced Section 161 CrPC. You are not required to sign them. Read nothing, sign nothing, until you have read it.
• If you are a woman, or a student, or under any other protected category, there are restrictions on where and when you can be called. Ask which one applies.
• You are entitled to have a lawyer present at every stage of questioning, and to refuse to answer until you have had that consultation.

Note the practical tension here. In this case the chamber advised filing a written reply rather than staying silent, because the complaint was weak and a clear, dated denial on record was worth more than a blank space. That is not universal advice. Whether to give a written statement or to say nothing is a decision that turns on whether you are a witness or a suspect, and you should not make it on your own.

What can the police actually do if you get a call?

If the complaint has not been registered as an FIR, the police can ask you to come in and explain your connection to the account. They can seek your phone number, your device, or your social media details, usually through a written notice. They can refer the matter for a preliminary enquiry. They cannot treat a complaint as self-proving.

If the complaint has been registered, the game changes. You or your lawyer need a copy of the FIR, the sections invoked, and a clear view of whether the offence alleged is bailable or non-bailable. That determines whether you need protection from arrest under Section 482 BNSS, which replaced Section 438 CrPC.

One more route is worth knowing. If the police refuse to register an FIR in a case where one should have been registered, the remedy is an application before the Magistrate under Section 175(3) BNSS — the successor to Section 156(3) CrPC. In this case no such application was needed because no FIR was sought in the first place, but it is the correct lever when the police sit on a genuine complaint.

Can a university debar a student over a pending police complaint?

This is the part that worried Rohan more than the police. An FIR can be fought over months. A debarment order can end a degree in a week.

The

The answer is that a university is not a court, and a pending police complaint is not a finding. A university's power to punish a student comes from its own statutes, ordinances and regulations, not from the fact that a complaint exists. Those rules almost always require a disciplinary inquiry: a written notice of what you are alleged to have done, a chance to see the material against you, a chance to reply, and a reasoned order at the end.

What a university cannot do is treat the complainant's version as proved because a complaint was handed across a police counter. Pendency is not proof. Suspicion is not misconduct. And a disciplinary action taken without an inquiry is the easiest kind of order to have set aside — not because the student was innocent, but because the procedure was skipped.

What a university can lawfully do

• Start an inquiry. A complaint from a fellow student is a legitimate trigger for the internal process.
• Issue an interim measure in a genuine case — for example, asking two students not to contact each other — if the rules permit it and the reasons are recorded.
• Ask you for a written explanation. You are entitled to know who complained and in what terms, at least in substance, before you answer.
• Impose a penalty if the inquiry itself — not the police complaint — establishes misconduct.

What it cannot do

• Debar, rusticate or withhold a degree on the sole basis that a police complaint is pending. Pending is not a finding.
• Act on an anonymous or undisclosed allegation without giving you a real opportunity to meet it.
• Compel you to answer questions that would incriminate you and then use those answers against you in the criminal matter.
• Convert a complaint into a finding without holding the inquiry its own rules prescribe.

Where the institution is a statutory or state-funded university, an order passed in breach of these principles can be challenged in the High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution — suspension, rustication, cancellation of admission, withholding of results. Where it is a private university, the position is less settled: High Courts have interfered where the institution discharges a public function or acts against its own rules, but the outcome depends heavily on that institution's charter and on which High Court you are in. That is not a bright line, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing.

There is also a separate route that many students never use. The UGC's student grievance redressal regulations require institutions to run a grievance mechanism, including an ombudsperson for appeals. An appeal to that authority is faster and cheaper than a writ petition, and it puts a second authority on record looking at the same file.

What "one-sided account" means for the analysis

Everything above assumes the account we were given is accurate: the students had no connection to the messaging account. If that assumption fails — if there is a device, a login or a message history that places either of them at that account — the whole picture changes, and it changes in the criminal case first, not the university one. We do not have the complainant's version. Neither, at the time of writing, does any independent record we can inspect.

Can this complaint affect your job, passport or police verification?

Usually not on its own. A written complaint that has not been registered as an FIR does not create a criminal record, and it normally does not surface in a police verification clearance the way a registered case does. What can surface is a station diary entry, or a pending-case column if the police have opened a case file and have not closed it.

This is the practical reason the written reply matters. If you say nothing and the file sits open for two years, you have two years of an unresolved entry. If your denial is on record early and the police record that no material connected you to the account, there is something concrete to point to later.

If an FIR does get registered, the consequences are real and are best dealt with by getting it closed or quashed, not by hoping it fades. A criminal case that ends in acquittal or a closure report still has to be disclosed in many verification forms while it is pending.

What about the threats that were made to the students?

Threatening a person with injury to reputation or career is criminal intimidation under Section 351 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and it is a cognizable offence. If the person making the threat was doing so by invoking a position in the armed forces to intimidate students, that is a matter the police can be asked to look at, and separately, it is something his service authorities can be asked to look at.

Whether either line goes anywhere depends entirely on proof. Threats made in a phone call are hard to establish unless there is a recording, a message, or a witness. So preserve what exists: call logs, screenshots, the date and time of each contact, and who was present. Do not delete the messages even if they are unpleasant to look at. Do not respond to them, either — an angry reply in the same register hands the other side exactly the material it is short of.

Can you make a counter-complaint for a false allegation?

Filing a knowingly false complaint with intent to injure a person is itself an offence under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and it is not a small one. A person whose reputation has been damaged by allegations circulated to a university, an employer or on social media may also have a civil claim for damages, and a criminal defamation complaint is available in a suitable case, defamation being an offence under Section 356 BNS.

Two cautions, and they matter more than the law. First, a statement made in a complaint to the police enjoys a qualified protection — you must show it was made without good faith and with knowledge that it was false, which is a high bar. Second, and in practice more important: a counter-complaint is a strategy decision. Sometimes it is exactly the right move, because it forces the other side to defend its own conduct. Sometimes it doubles the litigation and freezes everyone in place for years. Do not file one as an instinct. File it if it serves something.

If the police do register an FIR, what changes?

• Get the copy. Ask for the FIR number, the police station, the sections invoked and the date of registration. Write the number down the moment it is given to you.
• Check whether the offence is bailable or non-bailable. This decides whether you need protection from arrest before anything else.
• Anticipatory bail lies before the Sessions Court or the High Court under Section 482 BNSS, the provision that replaced Section 438 CrPC.
• Notice of appearance. For offences carrying a shorter sentence, the BNSS requires notice rather than immediate arrest, and the Supreme Court's guidelines in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar on arrests in such cases continue to apply.
• A closure report. If the investigation finds nothing connecting you to the account, the investigating officer can file a report to that effect — and you should be prepared to contest the matter if the court is inclined to accept it only in part.

What to do in the first 48 hours

If you are where the client was, with a complaint against your name and a phone that keeps ringing:

• Do not call the complainant, the complainant's family, or the police to explain yourself verbally.
• Do not go to the police station alone, and do not sign anything handed to you across a counter.
• Photograph or scan every page of the complaint you have been shown, exactly as it is, including the date and any stamp.
• Write your own timeline of events while it is fresh — dates, times, who said what, who was present.
• Preserve call logs and messages. Back them up. Do not clear your phone.
• Get a lawyer to read the complaint before you answer it in any form, to the police or to the university.

On these facts, there was a written reply to the police and a separate representation to the registrar. Both were filed through the correct channel, both were dated, and both said plainly what the position was. That is not the same as standing on a technicality. It is putting your version on record before someone else's version settles into the file by default.

Frequently Asked Questions

What to send us

If this is happening to you, send a single short email to me@sudhirrao.com or reach the chamber at +91 97295 06771 with three things: a scanned copy of the complaint, its date, and a two-line note setting out what you have been told you have done. That is enough to tell you whether there is anything to answer at all. You can also write through the contact page or request a consultation at /book. If the complaint is thin and no FIR has been registered, we will say so, because on some sets of facts there is little to argue and the wisest course is to file a short denial and let the file close.

This article is general information about Indian law and is not legal advice on your own situation. Please consult an advocate before acting on anything written here.

Advocate Sudhir Rao, Supreme Court of India

Facing a similar matter? Speak to a Delhi criminal defence lawyer — 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.