Court
Facts first, characterisation second
The commonest failing in a self-drafted complaint is that it leads with how the complainant feels and buries what actually happened. The reader — an officer, a Commission, a regulator — needs the sequence: who, what, when, where, what was lost, and what documents prove it. Set that out cleanly and the complaint is acted on; bury it and the complaint is filed away.
Police complaints
A written complaint is the starting point. It should identify the persons involved so far as known, state the facts in date order, specify what was taken, damaged or done, and attach whatever evidence exists. Keep a copy with an acknowledgement — the acknowledgement is what you will need if the matter has to be taken further.
Complaints are also frequently paired with an affidavit: a lost document affidavit alongside a complaint about a missing certificate, or an affidavit of facts alongside a complaint about a transaction. Lost document affidavit →
Consumer complaints
Before the District or State Commission. What decides these is documentation: the invoice, the warranty, the correspondence, and evidence of the defect or the deficiency in service. A demand notice first is frequently effective and is in any event useful evidence. Consumer matters →
Whether the matter is realistically a complaint at all. A great many grievances are contractual disputes rather than offences, and pursuing them through the wrong forum wastes months. Sometimes the honest answer is a civil claim, a consumer complaint, or a demand notice — and sometimes it is that the cost of pursuing exceeds what can realistically be recovered. You will be told which.
Drafted here, in Gujarati or English
Drafted by an advocate of 35+ years rather than filled into a downloaded template, e-stamped at a Government authorised centre, and notarised in the same visit. If the parties read Gujarati, the document is drafted in Gujarati — not translated out of an English form, because legal Gujarati has its own settled vocabulary and a literal translation frequently means something looser.
What to bring
- A dated account of what happened
- All supporting documents — invoices, receipts, messages, photographs
- Details of the person or business complained against
- Any earlier complaint and the response to it
- Photo ID for the complainant