A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed before the Uttarakhand High Court to raise the grievance that accused persons connected with or subsequently implicated in the criminal cases as well as the general public are not able to download FIRs from the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS portal), which was heard by a Division Bench of Chief Justice Manoj Kumar Gupta and Justice Subhash Upadhyay.
The petitioner relied upon the direction issued by the Supreme Court in Youth Bar Association of India v. Union of India & Anr. (2016) 9 SCC 473. The petitioner’s counsel also submitted that she herself tried to access the portal but failed to download the FIRs and that the system constantly showed an error.
On 18-09-2026, the Inspector General of Police (Crime, Law & Order), Uttarakhand sent instructions, according to which, the FIRs could be downloaded through Citizen portal and Devbhoomi Mobile App. It was also stated that there was some technical problem in the past which has now been resolved. However, the petitioner informed that she still failed to log on to the App. Hence, the Court directed the presence of a technical person in Court on the next date of hearing.
In compliance, the technical team demonstrated the working of the citizen portal and mobile app before the Court, stating that initially a person who seeks to download any FIR has to register himself on the portal and only then can he have access to the FIRs through the citizen portal as well as the mobile app. Further, the Court was informed that all FIRs are available on the citizen portal or mobile app except in relation to offences which are sensitive in nature, like sexual offences, offences pertaining to insurgency, terrorism, and other offences under POCSO Act or other related offences.
The Court opined that even though FIRs for such offences were not required to be uploaded as per the Supreme Court’s directions, the respondents must enable a feature on the system which should indicate the details of FIRs under the above-mentioned categories. It was said that this would help a person seeking to download such FIR to know the reason why the same was not available for downloading.
Assurance was given to the Court that the said aspect would be examined and thus, the petition was closed.
