A police investigation cannot be closed as ‘no clue’ just because Facebook did not hand over user details, the Calcutta High Court has held, reviving an SC/ST Act case over alleged casteist Facebook posts and faulting the Special Court for rejecting the complainant’s protest because he had filed other cases before.
Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court has quashed a Special Court’s acceptance of a “Nil/No clue” final report in a case under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 over alleged casteist abuse posted on Facebook, and directed further investigation by specialised cyber-forensic personnel, holding that “public view” under the Act is not confined to physical space [Sri Sayan Mondal v. State of West Bengal].
Justice Uday Kumar, in a judgment pronounced on September 25, 2026, allowed the complainant’s criminal revision and set aside the June 27, 2023 order of the Special Court at Alipore, which had rejected his protest petition, accepted the police’s Final Report True and dropped the special proceeding.
Background of the case
The petitioner, a member of a Scheduled Caste, lodged a written complaint on September 21, 2022 alleging that Rabiul Islam Bulbul and Sayan Dutta had posted foul, unparliamentary and casteist remarks on Facebook targeting his caste identity, religion, God and family. He enclosed screenshots of the posts. The complaint led to Behala Police Station Case No. 274 of October 17, 2022 under Section 3(1)(r)/(s) of the SC/ST Act, later renumbered as Special Case No. 89 of 2022. The allegations are yet to be tested, and the accused are presumed innocent.
During the investigation, the police recorded the complainant’s statement under Section 164 CrPC, examined independent witnesses under Section 161 CrPC and seized the digital links and screenshots. On January 20, 2023, however, they filed a “Nil/No clue” final report, stating that a request routed through the Cyber Police Station, Kolkata had not produced the actual user particulars from Facebook.
The complainant filed a protest (na-raji) petition on February 14, 2023. The Special Court rejected it, reasoning that charge sheets had been filed in three other special cases instituted by the same complainant, while a “Nil” report had been filed here after due investigation, so there was no cogent reason to order a re-investigation.
‘Shocks judicial conscience’
The High Court came down sharply on the Special Court’s reasoning, holding that every criminal transaction must be weighed on its own evidence:
“What shocks judicial conscience in the instant case is the reasoning adopted by the learned Special Judge, that because the complainant had filed three other special cases where charge sheets were submitted, the “Nil” report in the present case must be accepted. Criminal jurisprudence examines every distinct criminal transaction and occurrence on its own foundational worth and evidentiary matrix. A litigant’s resort to law in prior or parallel separate transactions can never form a legal basis to non-suit or presume a lack of merit in a distinct subsequent grievance of casteist insult committed via digital media.”
Such reasoning, the Court said, is “perverse and contrary to the basic tenets of criminal adjudication.” It also reiterated, citing Bhagwant Singh v. Commissioner of Police, that a court receiving a final report must examine a protest petition independently on its merits to see whether cognizable material has been overlooked or the investigation was perfunctory.
‘Public view’ in the digital domain
On the investigation itself, the Court held that a dead end with a social media intermediary is not the end of the road:
“Furthermore, under Section 3(1)(r)/(s) of the SC/ST Act, public view transcends physical space into the digital domain. When electronic screenshots and links are formally seized under a seizure list and corroborated by a Section 164 statement, the investigating agency cannot throw up its hands reporting “no clue” merely because a local cyber inquiry hit a dead end with an intermediary (Facebook/Meta), without exhausting specialized State CID cyber-forensic or IP-log tracking protocols.”
Relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in Vinay Tyagi v. Irshad Ali alias Deepak, it held that the trial court’s failure to order further investigation through a higher supervisory rank or a specialised cyber cell, despite such digital material, caused a serious miscarriage of justice.
The State had defended the closure, arguing that the investigation was duly conducted and, citing K. Vadivel v. V. Shanthi, that further investigation under Section 173(8) CrPC should be ordered only cautiously, in exceptional circumstances and on newly discovered material. The High Court held that decision to be factually distinguishable.
Directions
Setting aside the Special Court’s order and quashing both the acceptance of the final report and the dropping of Special Case No. 89 of 2022, the High Court remanded the matter to the Special Court, Alipore. Further investigation into the Behala Police Station case is to be conducted under the direct supervision of the Deputy Commissioner of Police (South-West Division / Specialised Cyber Cell supervisory tier), Kolkata Police, who must deploy specialised cyber-forensic personnel to trace the digital footprints and profile logs of the posts. A report under Section 173(8) CrPC is to be filed before the Special Court within three months of communication of the judgment, after which the Special Court will proceed in accordance with law.
Why The Ruling On Casteist Facebook Posts Matters
Offences under Section 3(1)(r) and (s) of the SC/ST Act require the insult or abuse to occur “in any place within public view”, a phrase drafted with physical spaces in mind. By holding that the requirement extends to social media posts, and that investigators must exhaust IP-log and forensic tracing before closing such cases, the judgment raises the bar for ‘no clue’ closures in online caste-abuse complaints. It does not decide whether the accused made the posts; that is left to the further investigation and, if it comes to it, trial.
Case Title: Sri Sayan Mondal v. State of West Bengal [CRR 2992 of 2023]
Bench: Justice Uday Kumar, Calcutta High Court
Date of Judgment: September 25, 2026
For the Petitioner: Shayan Sachin Basu
For the State: Dr. Achin Jana and Kritika Jain