Chennai: Madras high court set aside an order of the Tamil Nadu State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) directing state govt to pay 2 lakh compensation to activist Lois Sofia who was arrested in 2018 for shouting slogans against BJP inside an IndiGo flight from Chennai to Tuticorin, on which former BJP state president Tamilisai Soundarajan was travelling.On March 2, 2022, SHRC ordered compensation on the ground that there was a discrepancy in filing the FIR, in which a non-bailable section was allegedly inserted at a later point in time at the behest of higher officials.Quashing the order, a division bench of Justice G Jayachandran and Justice Shamim Ahmed said, “The commission has stretched its imagination beyond the facts and records placed before it and inferred that the inclusion of Section 505(1)(b) of IPC was done at the behest of the higher officials.”It is well settled that an FIR is not an encyclopaedia of crime. The content of the complaint should cite the scene of occurrence and the person who was alleged to have committed the crime. These facts provide prima facie material for a police officer while registering the police FIR. It is only during investigation that further truth about the complaint comes to light, the court added.“Further, the minor discrepancy, even if it is there in the documentation, is a matter for trial and for the magistrate to decide. It is not for SHRC to pre-conclude the issue. Ignoring its limits, the SHRC conducted a parallel trial. The finding rendered by the commission regarding the merits of the complaint is per se illegal,” the judges said.
