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 call to 112 does not register a road rage FIR. It creates an emergency dispatch record, and if you don't follow it up with a signed written complaint at the police station, the file gets closed. Go to the station, give your statement, name the vehicle number you read, and secure the CCTV footage within days, because most shop cameras overwrite in a week or two.
The scooter stayed up. That is the one thing Rohit Kulkarni remembers clearly about the morning of 18 March 2025 in Pune.
He was riding to work, somewhere past a crowded junction, when a dark SUV came at him from the side, close enough that he had to brake hard and shift his weight to keep the two-wheeler from going down. It didn't go down. He stayed upright, twisted away, and got clear of the vehicle. The driver didn't stop. Rohit pulled over, called 112, and read the registration number out loud to the operator, twice. The number began with MH12. He tried to photograph the plate as the car moved off, but his hands weren't steady and the picture came out useless.
What followed was three weeks of phone calls. The traffic police asked him to come to the station. He went. Then the file was closed, and he was told to come back and reopen it. A shop owner near the junction said he might have footage, if the drive hadn't already been overwritten. Rohit had read about a similar road rage case in another city and started wondering whether he was making a mistake by chasing any of this at all. That's when he approached the Chamber of Advocate Sudhir Rao.
Here's the part that mattered. The office of Advocate Sudhir Rao treated the 112 record as a lead and not as a complaint, filed a fresh written complaint the same week, and moved quickly for preservation of the CCTV before the drive cycled. Advocate Sudhir Rao and his office argued the identification of the vehicle and the failure to stop, and the investigation was reopened and registered. His familiarity with how these road rage FIR matters actually move at the police station stage is what changed the outcome.
Key Facts of the Case
- The client was riding a two-wheeler when an SUV swerved at him; he kept his balance and was not thrown off the vehicle.
- He reported the incident to 112 the same morning and read out a registration number beginning with MH12, but could not get a clear photograph of the plate.
- The vehicle did not stop after the incident and drove away.
- The traffic police initially asked him to attend the station, then closed the file and asked him to come back to reopen it.
- A nearby shop's CCTV was the only independent footage, and it was at risk of being overwritten.
- Before approaching the Chamber of Advocate Sudhir Rao, the client's own follow-up had produced no registered case.
- After a written complaint and a preservation request were filed, the matter was reopened and investigation began.
The Direct Legal Answer
Take the number you read to the operator. That is the thread the whole case hangs on.Why was my road rage FIR not registered after the 112 call?
Because nothing was ever written down and signed. Three things tend to go wrong, and in this file all three did.
- The dispatch slip and the complaint are treated as the same thing. They are not. One is an internal record. The other is the document that creates a case.
- The officer waits for you. The call ends with "attend the station", and if you go once and the officer is on bandobast duty, the file quietly stops moving.
- The file is closed for want of a complainant. Not for want of evidence. The station has no signature from you, so there is nothing to investigate and no one to inform.
None of this requires anyone to be acting in bad faith. It requires only that the complainant does not come back with a written complaint and ask for a receipt.
What the 112 record is actually good for
Plenty, if you keep it. It is the strongest corroboration you will get for one narrow fact: that you reported the incident on the same day, at a particular time, and named a particular vehicle.
- The call detail record fixes the time of the call to the minute, which matters when someone later suggests you invented the incident weeks afterwards.
- The dispatch log may show what was passed to the station, including the registration number you read out.
- If the operator directed you to attend a particular station, the record shows you did as you were told.
Ask your telecom provider for the call detail record for that date. It is a small thing to obtain and it is hard to argue with later.
What offence is this, and is it cognizable?
On facts like these — no collision, no injury, nobody off the vehicle — the offences are minor but they are real.
- Section 281, BNS — rash driving or riding on a public way.
- Section 125, BNS — an act endangering the personal safety of others.
- Section 184, Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 — dangerous driving, which stands on its own footing.
These are cognizable offences. That is the entire point of going to the station: the police have the power to register, and once information disclosing a cognizable offence is given in writing, they are expected to act on it.
One caution about Section 134 of the Motor Vehicles Act, which imposes a duty on a driver to stop and give particulars after an accident. That duty is triggered by injury to a person or damage to property. Here there was neither, so it may not apply at all. The fact that the driver simply drove on is still worth recording, but do not build the complaint around a provision that may not fit.
How to put a written complaint on record
It does not have to be long. It has to be signed, dated and receipted.
- Date, time and exact location of the incident, with a landmark.
- What the other vehicle did, in the order it happened.
- The registration number as you read it to 112, and the fact that you read it to 112.
- Make, colour and direction of travel, if you remember.
- The name of the driver if known, and the words used if anything was shouted.
- A sentence that no injury was caused and no collision occurred. Do not inflate this. A complaint that overstates the facts is easy to pull apart later.
- A specific request to seize and preserve CCTV from named shops or buildings around the spot.
Hand over two copies. Ask for the station diary number or an acknowledgement stamp on your copy. If the officer refuses to take it, note the date of the refusal — that date becomes the starting point for everything that follows.
If the station still will not register it
Three routes, in order.
- Send the substance of the complaint in writing to the Superintendent of Police under Section 173(4) of the BNSS. If the SP is satisfied, the investigation is either done by a senior officer or directed to be done.
- Move the jurisdictional Magistrate under Section 175(3) of the BNSS, asking for a direction to investigate. This is where a written refusal, or an unexplained silence after the SP letter, becomes useful.
- File a private complaint before the Magistrate. This is slower and you carry more of the work, but it does not depend on the police agreeing with you.
Filing a complaint you know to be false is itself an offence. That risk cuts both ways — it also means a truthful, specific complaint with a registration number behind it is difficult to brush aside.
The CCTV window is the whole case
Shop cameras overwrite. Depending on the DVR and the hard disk, footage disappears somewhere between a week and a month. This is not a legal deadline. It is a hardware one, and it does not care about your file.
What moves fast:
- A written request to the investigating officer, the same day you file the complaint, asking for the footage to be seized under a seizure memo. Written, because a phone call leaves no trace.
- A note of which camera covers what. A camera that faces the wrong way captures nothing useful, and it is better to know that early.
- If the officer does not act, ask the Magistrate to summon the recording from the shop owner. A court summons is harder to ignore than a request from a stranger.
The shop owner is not your adversary. Most of them will hand over a copy if you ask politely before the drive cycles. Once it has cycled, no amount of law brings it back.
What this realistically takes
Here is the honest sequence, on a complaint of this kind.
- Day one to day three:
- Days one to three: the written complaint goes in and is receipted, and the request to seize the CCTV goes to the investigating officer in writing, the same day.
- Week one to week three: the officer either seizes the footage under a seizure memo or does not. Call the station once a week, note the date and the name of whoever you spoke to. That note becomes your record if nothing moves.
- Week three to week eight: if the file is still sitting, the substance of the complaint goes to the Superintendent of Police under Section 173(4) of the BNSS, by registered post, and you keep the acknowledgement.
- Month two to month four: if the SP letter produces nothing, an application under Section 175(3) of the BNSS before the jurisdictional Magistrate. After that, the court's calendar sets the pace, not you.
On money: filing your own written complaint costs nothing. Certified copies and registered post cost a few hundred rupees. A lawyer's fee begins at the Magistrate stage, and it depends on the court, the number of hearings and the volume of paper. Anyone who quotes you a figure before reading the complaint is guessing.
On time: nothing in this kind of matter moves in weeks. Two to four months to a first real step is normal, and the only genuinely urgent deadline is the CCTV drive, which is a hardware clock and not a legal one.
What to bring to a first consultation
- A copy of the written complaint you filed, and the acknowledgement or station diary number if you got one.
- The 112 call detail record for that date, from your telecom provider.
- Any photograph you managed, even a blurred one, with the original file and not a forwarded copy.
- The registration number as you read it, the make, colour and direction of travel of the other vehicle.
- A rough sketch of the spot with the junctions, the shops and which camera faces which way.
- The dates you attended the station, and what you were told, written down while you still remember it.
When there may be nothing to argue
This has to be said plainly. If you never got a number, there is no independent witness, no injury, no damage to your vehicle, and the shop footage has already cycled, the complaint becomes one person's word against a description of a car. On those facts, a Magistrate can be asked to direct an investigation, but there is very little for anyone to investigate. A truthful assessment of that is worth more than a hopeful one.
There is also the difficulty that runs through every case of this kind: the account is one-sided. The other driver has not been heard. What looks like a deliberate swerve from the saddle can, in an investigation, look like a lane change. Which is why the registration number and the footage carry the whole weight, and why everything else — the anger, the near miss, the shaking hands — is real but not evidence.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I file a road rage FIR online without going to the station?
Some states run an online portal for e-complaints, and most of them end with the same instruction: attend the station and sign the complaint. An online entry is a lead. The FIR rests on information reduced to writing, read over to you and signed. Wherever you can, go in person. If the incident happened in another district, you can give the information at the nearest station, which is then expected to register it as a Zero FIR and transfer it to the station with jurisdiction.
What if I could not read the whole number plate?
Give what you have. A partial number beginning with a state and district series, plus the make, colour, model and direction of travel, gives the investigator something to check against registration records. A partial number is not useless. A fabricated full number, however, will collapse the moment it is verified, and it will take your credibility with it.
The 112 operator took my call. Is that not enough?
No. The call fixes the date, the time and the fact that you named a vehicle. It does not create a case, and it does not commit the police to investigating. It is corroboration, and it is good corroboration, but it is not a complaint.
Can the police refuse to register it?
If the information discloses a cognizable offence, registration is mandatory — that is the settled position the Supreme Court laid down in Lalita Kumari v. State of U.P. In practice, officers treat minor road incidents as matters to be settled, or wait for a complainant who never returns. The refusal is the wrong you then remedy, and the remedy starts with a dated note of the refusal and a letter to the Superintendent of Police.
How long do I have before it is too late?
There is no deadline for the police to register an FIR. There is a limitation period for a private complaint before a Magistrate, and for offences punishable with up to a year's imprisonment it is one year from the date of the offence. The offences in a no-injury road rage incident fall in that bracket. So the outer window is a year, but the practical window is the life of the CCTV drive, which is days or weeks. Treat the footage as the deadline.
What if the other driver denies everything?
He is entitled to. That is why the registration number, the call record and the footage matter more than anything you say. An investigation that produces none of those three usually ends the same way it started — with no case.
If you are in this situation now
Do two things before you do anything else. Write the complaint today, in your own words, dated and signed, listing the registration number you read to 112, the landmark at the spot, and a request to seize the CCTV from the shops around it. Hand it in and get a receipt. Then send the date, the place and the number you have to the chamber, and keep the call detail record ready.
For a first look, send the written complaint if you have already filed one, the date and place of the incident, and a two-line note on what happened. If there is a number plate in your account, say so in the first line — that one detail decides whether there is anything to pursue. You can reach the office through contact us or book a consultation.
This article is general information about how these matters are dealt with under Indian law. It is not legal advice on your own situation, and reading it does not create a lawyer-client relationship.
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.