Someone has encroached your land — police complaint, civil suit, or executive magistrate

The first instinct when someone encroaches on vacant land is to call the police, and the first disappointment is usually that the police decline to act. That is not because the complaint was ignored — it is because a boundary or possession dispute is ordinarily a civil matter, and the police have limited power to resolve who is entitled to possess a piece of land. Knowing which remedy actually applies saves months.

Where the encroachment is fresh and you were in settled possession until recently, the fastest route is usually a civil suit for a permanent and, where urgent, an interim injunction restraining further interference, coupled with a suit for recovery of possession under Section 5 or Section 6 of the Specific Relief Act depending on how long you have been out of possession. Section 6 gives a summary remedy if you file within six months of being dispossessed without your consent and without due process of law — a narrow window that is easy to miss if you wait, hoping the problem resolves itself.

Where the dispute is genuinely likely to cause a breach of the peace — both sides claiming possession, tempers rising, a real risk of confrontation — Section 145 of the BNSS, the provision that replaced Section 145 CrPC, allows an executive magistrate to attach the property and determine possession on an interim basis pending a civil decision on title. This is not a substitute for a civil suit; it is a peacekeeping measure, and the magistrate's finding on possession does not bind the civil court on the underlying title.

A criminal complaint has its place, but only where the facts fit an actual offence — criminal trespass, mischief in damaging boundary structures, or where documents were forged to support the encroachment. Filed on its own to pressure someone off disputed land where no offence is actually made out, it tends to go nowhere and can also expose the complainant to a claim for malicious prosecution.

Before filing anything, we get an advocate-commissioner appointed to inspect and measure the land against the Field Measurement Book sketch, because a boundary dispute argued without an independent survey on record is argued on assertion alone. Once that evidence exists, the choice between injunction, recovery of possession, Section 145 BNSS and a criminal complaint stops being a guess and becomes a straightforward question of which remedy the facts actually support.