When NCW Notices Are Ignored by Police: What a Crime Victim Can Do Next

The Mehta family in Gomti Nagar, Lucknow, had a quiet, orderly home. That changed on a Tuesday afternoon in early March 2025, when a group of individuals forcibly entered their residence, hurled verbal threats at Priya Mehta, a newly married woman with no connection whatsoever to her in-laws' property dispute, and physically intimidated elderly family members present in the house. The group had a grievance against the family's younger son, Rohit Mehta, who did not even live at that address.

The family approached the Gomti Nagar Police Station immediately. They were turned away without an FIR. An online complaint on the CCTNS portal produced nothing. A written representation to the Senior Superintendent of Police, Lucknow, went unanswered. Running low on local remedies, the family filed an istgasa before the Judicial Magistrate and simultaneously filed a complaint with the National Commission for Women. The NCW registered the complaint and dispatched an official notice dated 18 March 2025 to the SSP, Lucknow, demanding an Action Taken Report within a stipulated deadline. The deadline passed. Absolute silence from the SSP's office.

It was at this point that the family reached Advocate Sudhir Rao. Earlier efforts, including the SSP representation and the NCW route alone, had not compelled any police response. Through a structured approach that combined a private complaint under Section 175(3) BNSS before the Magistrate, a writ petition in the Allahabad High Court highlighting the NCW notice and the SSP's non-compliance, and a complaint on the state grievance portal citing the binding mandate of Lalita Kumari v. Government of UP, (2014) 2 SCC 1, an FIR was registered within days. The matter moved from a stalled grievance to an active investigation, demonstrating precisely why specialised handling matters in cases where institutional machinery has stalled.

You can read about this case in detail at https://sudhirrao.com/ncw-notice-ignored-by-police-what-crime-victim-can-do/