How to file an FIR or police complaint in Nepal

The first is a report of a criminal offence the state prosecutes. Theft, assault, robbery, rape, homicide, drug offences, human trafficking and similar matters are investigated by Nepal Police and prosecuted by the government. You report; the state carries the case. Your role afterwards is as complainant and witness rather than as the party running the litigation.

The second is a matter where the law puts the case in the hands of the aggrieved person. Here the police may have a limited role or none, and the case is brought by you, usually through a lawyer, in the appropriate court. Defamation and various interpersonal matters fall into this territory.

The third is a civil dispute, which is not a crime at all. An unpaid loan is a civil claim for recovery. A boundary dispute is a land matter. A contractor who did poor work is a contract dispute. A family disagreement over inherited property is a partition matter. Police stations receive all of these constantly and can do very little with them, which is the source of most of the frustration people report.

There is an important qualification. The same facts can be both civil and criminal depending on intention. Money lent to a friend who cannot repay is civil. Money obtained by someone who never intended to repay, using false documents or a fabricated business, may be cheating or fraud and therefore criminal. A cheque that bounces because of a genuine shortfall is different from a cheque issued on an account the drawer knew was closed. When the difference is intention, say so explicitly in your written report and set out the facts that show it.

Nepal Police publish public service information and answers to frequently asked questions covering what the force does and how citizens should approach it, and the force is organised into departments and directorates with defined responsibilities. Reading what a unit is for before approaching it saves a wasted journey.

If you genuinely cannot tell which category you are in, that is a reasonable question to ask a lawyer for an hour rather than to resolve by trial and error at a counter. An hour of advice at the start is routinely cheaper than six months of the wrong process.

Go to the police station whose area covers the place the offence happened. Jurisdiction follows the location of the offence rather than where you live, and a station outside its area will normally redirect you. Nepal Police publishes station contact numbers and a facility for finding the offices nearest you.

Report as soon as you can. Delay damages evidence, weakens accounts, and in some cases runs into statutory limitation periods after which a case cannot be brought at all. If something has just happened and you are safe, report it now and refine the details later rather than waiting until you have assembled a perfect account.

Write it down before you arrive if circumstances allow. A clear written statement — date, time, place, what happened, who was involved, what was taken or damaged, who witnessed it, what evidence exists — is easier to register accurately than a verbal account given under stress, and it becomes the basis of the written report either way.

Name the offence in ordinary language and stick to facts. 'On this date at this place, this person struck me on the head with a stick and I required treatment at this hospital' is a report. 'That family has been harassing us for years' is background. Include the background, but put the specific incident first.

Bring your citizenship certificate or other identity document, and any evidence you already hold: medical documents, photographs, damaged items, receipts, transaction records, screenshots, the names and contact details of witnesses.

Insist on a copy of the registered complaint showing its registration number and the date. This is the single most important thing you leave with. It proves you reported, on that day, in those terms. Without it you have no way of demonstrating what you said or when, and no reference to quote when you follow up.

Ask who is handling the case and how to contact them, then follow up in person at reasonable intervals rather than by repeated phone calls. Cases that are visibly being pursued by a complainant who keeps a file, keeps dates and asks specific questions progress differently from cases where nobody comes back.

It happens, and it is not always improper. A station may decline because the matter is outside its jurisdiction, because it is civil rather than criminal, or because the facts as presented do not disclose an offence. Ask which of those it is, and ask for it in writing. A refusal with a stated reason is something you can act on; a shrug is not.

If the reason is jurisdiction, ask which station does cover it and go there. If the reason is that the matter is civil, ask what would make it criminal and consider whether the intention element is present and simply was not explained clearly.

If you believe a serious offence is being wrongly refused, escalate to the District Police Office and ask the office chief to look at it. Nepal Police publishes its structure and the departments and directorates within it, and a district-level officer has both the authority and the perspective a busy station counter may lack.

The next escalation is the District Attorney's office, which handles the prosecution of state cases. Where an offence the state prosecutes is not being registered or investigated, that office is the appropriate place to raise it, because it is the body that would ultimately have to take the case to court.

The Chief District Officer, under the Ministry of Home Affairs, is the senior civil administrative authority in the district and is another route for administrative failures.

Where the complaint concerns police conduct itself — a refusal to register, mistreatment, or an abuse of authority — Nepal Police operates a complaint and grievance route, and the National Human Rights Commission receives complaints about human rights violations including those by state authorities. Both are legitimate and both leave a record.

Keep everything in writing and keep the dates. An escalation supported by a dated record of what you said to whom, and what they said back, is a different proposition from an escalation based on recollection.

Nepal Police is organised into departments and directorates with defined responsibilities, and going to the specialist unit rather than the general counter usually produces a better-informed response. Knowing which units exist is half of it.

Cybercrime — online fraud, account takeovers, harassment through social media, non-consensual images, blackmail using intimate material — is handled by the Cyber Bureau, and reporting online offences there rather than at a general station means dealing with officers who understand digital evidence. Preserve the evidence before you report: screenshots including the profile and URL, transaction records, message history, and nothing deleted.

Offences against women and children are handled by dedicated service centres, and a complainant in a domestic violence, trafficking or child protection matter is entitled to approach one directly. These units exist precisely because the general counter is not the right environment for those disclosures.

Tourist police assist foreign visitors, including with thefts, lost documents and the reporting that insurers and embassies require, and Nepal Police publishes information about the tourist police function.

Traffic matters are handled by the traffic police, separately from criminal investigation. A road collision generates both an administrative traffic process and potentially a criminal one, and they run in parallel rather than in sequence.

For emergencies, use 100 and the published emergency contact numbers rather than trying to identify the correct specialist unit under pressure. Getting a response quickly matters more than getting the right department first time; the routing happens afterwards.

Nepal Police also publishes safety and security guidance for the public, notices including lost identity documents, and a general help section. These are worth reading before an incident rather than after, particularly for anyone new to a city or a district.

Preserve first, report second, but do not let preservation delay a report by more than it must. Photograph injuries and damage on the day, with something in frame that establishes when, and get medical attention documented — a hospital record made at the time is worth more than any later account of how badly you were hurt.

Do not clean up a scene before it has been seen if the offence is serious and recent. This applies to burglaries in particular, where people instinctively tidy and in doing so remove the fingerprints and disturbance patterns an investigation depends on.

For financial and online offences, the evidence is transactional. Bank statements, wallet transaction identifiers, phone numbers, account names, screenshots with visible timestamps and URLs. Report to your bank or payment provider at the same time as the police, because the freezing of an account is time-sensitive in a way the criminal case is not.

Witnesses fade fast. Take names and phone numbers on the day from anybody who saw anything, including people who think they saw nothing important. A neighbour who noticed an unfamiliar motorcycle at the wrong hour is a witness even if they do not consider themselves one.

Be aware that several offences carry statutory limitation periods, after which a case cannot be brought however strong the evidence. The periods differ by offence and are set in law rather than by police practice, so if any significant time has already passed, get advice quickly rather than assuming there is no rush.

Finally, be honest about what you want and what is realistic. A criminal complaint is a request that the state punish someone; it is not a mechanism for getting money back, and a criminal case running alongside an unfiled civil claim can leave you with a conviction and no recovery. Where money is the object, ask a lawyer whether a civil claim should be running in parallel, and start it in time.