In Suman Molla v. State of West Bengal, the Calcutta High Court was asked to examine whether a person detained as an alleged Bangladeshi national had produced sufficient material to establish Indian citizenship. Rejecting a habeas corpus petition, the Division Bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Ajay Kumar Gupta held that documents such as Aadhaar cards, voter identity cards, PAN cards, bank records and ancestral land records, though important indicators of identity and residence, are not conclusive proof of citizenship. The judgment reinforces the statutory burden placed upon persons alleged to be foreigners while simultaneously illustrating how difficult that burden can become in practice, particularly for individuals whose lives have long been documented through the very instruments of the Indian State.

At its core, the dispute was not whether the State could regulate immigration or deport undocumented migrants. Rather, it concerned a more fundamental legal question: what must a detainee prove to establish Indian citizenship once the State alleges that they are a foreign national? The Court undertook a detailed examination of what constitutes legally acceptable proof of citizenship under Indian law, reiterating that citizenship cannot be inferred from possession of government-issued identity documents alone. Instead, the Court emphasized that citizenship must be established strictly in accordance with the Citizenship Act, 1955, and that when authorities allege a person to be a foreign national, the burden of disproving that allegation rests squarely upon the individual concerned.

Background

The habeas corpus petition was filed by the detainee’s relative, challenging the detention of a man who had been apprehended on June 18, 2026 after authorities concluded that he was a Bangladeshi national. The petitioner argued that the detention was illegal because the detainee’s citizenship remained under dispute following the 2026 Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. According to the petition, the detainee had initially been placed “under adjudication” during the SIR exercise, his name had subsequently been deleted from the electoral roll, and an appeal against that deletion remained pending. Consequently, it was argued that the authorities could not proceed to detain him before the citizenship dispute had been finally resolved.

To establish Indian citizenship, the petitioner relied upon several documents, including:

• the detainee’s Voter Identity Card;
• Aadhaar Card;
• PAN Card;
• bank account records;
• ancestral land records; and
• the passport of the detainee’s paternal aunt.

The petitioner also relied upon the Supreme Court’s decision in Sabitri Dey @ Swasthi Dey v. Union of India to contend that a meaningful opportunity of hearing ought to have preceded the detention.

The State, however, maintained that the detainee had already been identified as a Bangladeshi national after inquiry, interrogation and verification, and had been detained in accordance with the Ministry of Home Affairs Circular dated May 2, 2025 governing deportation proceedings. It further informed the Court that the detainee had failed to produce any document capable of legally establishing Indian citizenship within the period prescribed under the circular.

“There is an acknowledgement on the part of the detainee that he is a Bangladeshi national. However, such acknowledgement was made when the detainee was in the detention centre.” (Para 19)

“There is no criminal proceedings initiated as against the detainee as on date. Without entering into the debate as to whether or not an admission of civil liability made while in detention will be visited with the same consequences as that of an admission made to the police while in custody in respect of the criminal proceeding, we propose to examine the documents and materials put forward by the detainee and the writ petitioner in support of the claim of Indian Citizenship of the detainee. Even if we are to apply the principle that, an admission made in the custody of the police 6 should be discarded, none the less, the onus of establishing citizenship remains with the detainee.” (Para 20)

Court’s reasoning

Citizenship cannot be proved merely through identity documents: The central question before the Bench was not whether the detainee possessed official identity documents, but whether those documents legally established citizenship under the Citizenship Act. The Court answered that question emphatically in the negative.

Examining each document individually, the Bench observed that a Voter Identity Card merely evidences enrolment in the electoral roll and is not conclusive proof of citizenship. That conclusion assumed greater significance in the present case because the detainee’s name had already been deleted from the electoral roll during the SIR process.

The Court further held that an Aadhaar Card does not certify citizenship, noting that Aadhaar is fundamentally an identity document linked to residence and not nationality. Likewise, a PAN Card merely facilitates tax administration and cannot establish citizenship. Even the opening or operation of a bank account does not prove that the account holder is an Indian citizen.

Similarly, ancestral land records, although relevant to ownership or lineage, do not establish the citizenship of descendants. Nor could the passport of the detainee’s paternal aunt conclusively prove his own nationality, since citizenship is an individual legal status that cannot be inferred solely from the citizenship of relatives without satisfying the statutory requirements governing acquisition by descent.

In doing so, the Court effectively distinguished between documents that establish identity or residence and documents capable of legally proving citizenship, observing that the former cannot automatically establish the latter.

“There is a Voter Identity Card of the detainee appearing at page 27 of the writ petition, AADHAAR Card at page 28, PAN Card issued by the Income Tax Department at page 29, a Pass book of United Bank of India from pages 30 to 35 of the writ petition.” (Para 38)

“Voter Identity Card is not a conclusive proof with regard to Indian Citizenship. It is evidence of enrolment of the detainee in the electoral roll. Name of the detainee stands deleted from the electoral roll in the SIR, 2026 process.” (Para 39)

“AADHAAR Card, cannot by itself be a conclusive proof of Indian citizen. So also a Permanent Account Number issued by the Income Tax Department. Opening of a Bank Account, by itself, again is not a proof of Indian citizenship.” (Para 40)

“Record of Rights of the great grand-father and the grand-father of the detainee are annexed to the writ petition. Again, those do not establish conclusively the Indian citizenship of the detainee.” (Para 41)

For millions of Indians, these are precisely the documents through which the State recognises their existence. They are required to open bank accounts, obtain welfare benefits, access government schemes, pay taxes, register property, secure employment and participate in elections. Yet, when citizenship itself becomes disputed, the Court holds that these very documents carry limited evidentiary value.

This legal distinction between identity recognised by the State and citizenship recognised by law may be doctrinally sound, but it also reveals the fragmented nature of India’s documentary architecture. Individuals often accumulate multiple layers of State-issued identification over decades without ever possessing a singular document conclusively proving citizenship. The judgment therefore reinforces a legal principle while simultaneously highlighting the evidentiary difficulties faced by persons accused of being foreigners.

Citizenship must be established under the Citizenship Act, 1955: Through the judgement, the Bench had emphasised that citizenship cannot be inferred from possession of identity documents. Instead, it must be established through one of the statutory modes recognised under the Citizenship Act, 1955.

The Court carefully analysed whether the detainee could claim citizenship by birth under Section 3, by descent under Section 4, or by registration under Section 5. It concluded that none of these routes had been satisfactorily demonstrated. No birth certificate or reliable proof of birth was produced to substantiate citizenship by birth. The claim of citizenship by descent failed because the documentary record contained inconsistencies regarding the detainee’s parentage and failed to establish the Indian citizenship of the relatives through whom descent was claimed. Citizenship by registration was never pleaded at all.

The Court was particularly critical of the manner in which the petition had been argued, observing that despite repeated opportunities, neither the petitioner nor the detainee identified the statutory provision under which citizenship was claimed. Instead of addressing the legal requirements of the Citizenship Act, the petition relied primarily upon documentary indicators of identity and residence.

“Neither the writ petitioner nor the detainee despite repeated opportunities being granted to them addressed the Court on the core issue of citizenship of the detainee. Queries of the Court as to under which provision of the Act of 1955 is the detainee a citizen of India is met with either stoic silence or thunderous utterances completely removed from the issue at hand, by the learned Advocate for the petitioner.” (Para 23)

This insistence on grounding every citizenship claim within the framework of the Citizenship Act is legally significant. It reinforces that citizenship disputes cannot be resolved through broad assertions of long residence or possession of government documents alone; they must satisfy the statutory conditions prescribed by Parliament.

Yet this approach also raises broader concerns. In practice, many citizenship disputes arise precisely because documentary trails spanning several decades are incomplete, inconsistent or unavailable. Particularly in border regions and among economically vulnerable populations, births frequently went unregistered, family records remain fragmented and documentary continuity across generations is difficult to establish. By requiring claimants to trace citizenship strictly through statutory categories while simultaneously according limited evidentiary value to commonly held documents, the threshold for proving citizenship becomes considerably more demanding. Whether such a standard strikes the appropriate balance between sovereign control over immigration and protection against erroneous detention is a question that extends well beyond the facts of this individual case.

The burden of proof survives the transition from the Foreigners Act to the Immigration and Foreigners Act: The second major contribution of the judgment lies in its treatment of the burden of proof under the newly enacted Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025. Although the legislation repealed the Foreigners Act, 1946, the Court makes it abundantly clear that the fundamental evidentiary principle governing foreigners’ proceedings has remained unchanged—the person alleged to be a foreign national bear the burden of proving otherwise.

The Court located this burden in Section 16 of the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, observing that once the Indian authorities allege that a detained person is a foreign national, “the onus is on the detainee to establish his or her nationality.” The Bench noted that the detention had been effected pursuant to the Ministry of Home Affairs Circular dated 2 May 2025, which lays down the procedure for apprehension and deportation of illegally staying foreign nationals.

“When Indian authorities alleged that, a person detained is a foreign national, the onus is on the detainee to establish his or her nationality. This is so by reason of Section 16 of the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 1946.” (Para 12)

Importantly, neither the validity of the Circular nor the procedure prescribed therein had been challenged by the petitioner. In the absence of such a challenge, the Court confined itself to examining whether the authorities had acted within the framework of the Circular, ultimately concluding that they had.

This aspect of the judgment is significant because it effectively signals judicial continuity despite legislative change. While the statutory framework has shifted from the Foreigners Act, 1946 to the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, the Court treats the burden of proof as having been substantially carried forward into the new regime.

In doing so, however, the judgment raises a larger constitutional question. The allocation of the burden of proof has long distinguished foreigners’ law from ordinary civil and criminal proceedings. In most legal disputes, the party making an allegation must establish it. Foreigners legislation reverses that position. Once the executive forms the view that an individual is a foreign national, it is the individual who must prove Indian citizenship. This reverse burden has historically been justified on the basis that facts concerning one’s birth, parentage, family lineage and migration history lie within the “special knowledge” of the individual concerned. The Calcutta High Court adopts precisely this rationale.

Inconsistencies in the petition weakened the claim: Apart from deficiencies in documentary evidence, the Bench found significant inconsistencies in the petitioner’s own case. While the police complaint described the petitioner as the detainee’s cousin, the writ petition claimed he was the detainee’s uncle. The Court also found the assertion that the petitioner had raised the detainee after his father’s death to be implausible, noting that the petitioner himself was only 38 years old whereas the detainee claimed to be 46.

The Bench further recorded that despite repeated opportunities, neither the petitioner nor the detainee disclosed the burial place of the detainee’s parents, even after the Court indicated that such information could facilitate DNA testing to establish lineage. Their refusal prompted the Court to draw an adverse inference against the claim that the parents were Indian citizens. These inconsistencies, according to the Court, further eroded the credibility of the petitioner’s assertions regarding the detainee’s citizenship.

The Court’s reliance on Sabitri Dey: A part of the petitioner’s argument rested on the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Sabitri Dey @ Swasthi Dey v. Union of India, where the Court had underscored the importance of procedural fairness in foreigners’ proceedings in Assam. The petitioner argued that the detainee ought not to have been detained before his citizenship claim had been adjudicated and relied upon Sabitri Dey to contend that an opportunity of hearing was an indispensable safeguard before coercive action could be taken.

The Calcutta High Court, however, distinguished the decision rather than applying it directly. It observed that Sabitri Dey arose under an entirely different statutory framework—the Foreigners Act, 1946 read with the Foreigners (Tribunals) Order, 1964, which governed proceedings before Foreigners Tribunals in Assam. That regime, the Court noted, involved formal adjudication before specialised tribunals and was therefore materially different from the procedure presently being followed under the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 and the MHA Circular dated May 2, 2025. Nevertheless, the Court did not reject the principles articulated by the Supreme Court altogether.

On the contrary, it expressly acknowledged that Sabitri Dey reaffirmed an important proposition that although the burden of proof rests upon the proceedee, the adjudicatory authority is not relieved of its obligation to conduct a lawful adjudication. The Bench recognised that the Supreme Court had interpreted Section 9 of the Foreigners Act as operating alongside ordinary evidentiary principles, placing the burden upon the person proceeded against because matters such as birth, parentage, residence and family history ordinarily remain within that person’s special knowledge.

A detailed report on the Sabitri Dey judgment may be read here.

Yet, having acknowledged these principles, the Court concluded that they did not assist the petitioner because the challenge before it was fundamentally different. The present detention had been carried out under the new statutory framework; the applicable MHA Circular itself had not been challenged; and there was no allegation that the authorities had departed from the procedure prescribed therein.

The distinction is legally coherent. However, it also leaves certain constitutional questions unresolved. The Supreme Court’s observations in Sabitri Dey were not confined merely to the procedural architecture of Assam’s Foreigners Tribunals. They reflected broader constitutional concerns regarding fairness where questions of citizenship carry the gravest of consequences—loss of liberty, detention and eventual deportation. Those concerns do not disappear merely because Parliament has enacted a new immigration statute. Indeed, one may argue that the repeal of the Foreigners Act does not diminish the constitutional obligation to ensure that executive determinations of nationality remain subject to meaningful procedural safeguards.

An impossibly high evidentiary threshold?

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the judgment is not its reiteration that Aadhaar, PAN or Voter ID are not conclusive proof of citizenship, that proposition has long been accepted in law, but its treatment of the cumulative evidentiary value of multiple public documents.

The petitioner did not rely upon a single document. Instead, the record contained an array of government-issued and historical documents: a Voter Identity Card, Aadhaar Card, PAN Card, bank account records, ancestral land records, and the passport of a close blood relative. Yet the Court held that none of these documents, whether considered individually or collectively, established citizenship.

This raises an important evidentiary question. While each document may not independently prove citizenship, should courts entirely discount the probative value arising from their cumulative existence?

The Bench correctly reiterates a settled proposition that identity documents are not citizenship documents. Legally, Aadhaar establishes identity and residence, PAN facilitates taxation, while the Voter ID merely evidences electoral enrolment. None is issued after a formal determination of citizenship.

However, in practical governance, these documents are issued by different State authorities after varying levels of verification. When an individual has simultaneously been recognised by electoral authorities, tax authorities, banking institutions and other public agencies over a prolonged period, those records may not conclusively establish citizenship, but they do create a significant evidentiary narrative that deserves weight. By treating every document as legally irrelevant once citizenship is questioned, the Court risks reducing decades of governmental recognition to virtually no evidentiary value.

The burden of proof may become nearly impossible to discharge

The Court places considerable emphasis on the statutory burden under the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, holding that once authorities allege that an individual is a foreign national, the burden shifts to that individual to establish Indian citizenship.

However, in India, birth registrations were not uniformly maintained across rural India, particularly before universal civil registration became commonplace. Land records may be incomplete, names frequently vary across official records, and multiple generations may never have possessed formal documentary proof of citizenship. Against that backdrop, if voter registration, Aadhaar, PAN, banking records, ancestral property records and even close relatives’ documents are all held insufficient, the question naturally arises: what evidence would realistically satisfy the burden?

The Court also found inconsistencies regarding the petitioner’s relationship with the detainee, discrepancies in the father’s name across documents, and the inability to identify the burial place of the detainee’s parents, drawing adverse inferences from these circumstances. Those inconsistencies undoubtedly weakened the petitioner’s case. Yet the reasoning also reflects an expectation of documentary precision that may not always align with Indian administrative realities.

Minor spelling variations, inconsistent recording of names across generations, differing descriptions of familial relationships and gaps in historical records are hardly uncommon in citizenship litigation. Courts have repeatedly recognised such inconsistencies in other contexts without treating them as determinative. Viewed through that lens, the judgment arguably privileges documentary consistency over the broader social realities of record-keeping in India.

Detailed reports of small errors costing people their citizenship may be read here and here.

Interestingly, the Court distinguishes the Supreme Court’s decision in Sabitri Dey primarily because it arose under a different statutory framework. However, Sabitri Dey was not merely about the Foreigners Act—it also reaffirmed the broader constitutional requirement that nationality determinations affecting liberty must be undertaken through fair and meaningful procedures.

The judgment therefore raises a larger constitutional question that extends beyond the facts of this case: when the State itself has, over decades, repeatedly recognised an individual through various statutory systems, should those recognitions collectively carry greater evidentiary weight in citizenship adjudication, even if none is independently conclusive?

The complete judgment may be read below:

Related:

SC remands 27 citizenship cases, reaffirms constitutional fairness

Gauhati High Court upholds foreigner declaration, rejects mental illness plea

Abdul Sheikh Citizenship Case: Gauhati High Court issues notice, continues protection against deportation

“All I Wanted Was Peace”: How 55-year-old widow Aklima Sarkar won back her citizenship

Defending Citizenship, On the Ground | CJP Assam 2025

From Despair to Dignity: How CJP helped Elachan Bibi win back her identity, prove her citizenship

The post The Citizenship Proof Paradox: Calcutta HC holds Aadhaar, Voter ID and PAN cannot prove citizenship, burden on detainee appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The judgment, delivered by Fourth Additional Sessions Judge Mukesh Nath, is significant not simply because it results in an acquittal, but because of the manner in which the prosecution’s case unravels under judicial scrutiny.

Far from identifying minor procedural lapses, the court records a chain of fundamental investigative failures: the majority of prosecution witnesses abandoned the case; the only eyewitness was introduced nearly two months after the incident without explanation and was absent from the FIR; no Test Identification Parade (TIP) was ever conducted despite the accused allegedly being part of a large mob; and forensic evidence failed to support one of the prosecution’s central allegations—that petrol bombs were used during the violence.

Read together, the findings expose a prosecution that, in the court’s assessment, failed to satisfy even the most basic evidentiary requirements necessary for a criminal conviction. The judgment also carries another uncomfortable fact. Before being acquitted, the accused had already spent between 462 and 827 days in custody, close to two years in some cases, raising broader questions about prolonged incarceration in riot prosecutions that ultimately fail for lack of evidence.

The prosecution alleged that the eleven Muslim men, along with several unidentified persons, formed an unlawful assembly during the communal violence that erupted in Khargone on April 10, 2022. According to the prosecution, the accused were part of a mob armed with stones, swords, sticks and petrol bombs that attacked Hindu homes in Bhatwadi locality, vandalised residential properties, burnt vehicles, trespassed into houses and endangered the lives of residents.

What this verdict also showcases is the frequent faultlines displayed by law enforcement during bouts of communal violence. Instead of dispassionate acts of detention and arrests, inherent majoritarian biases train actions only on males from the minority communities. In fact, Sabrangindia had on April 14, 2022 reported how it was the hate speech and provocations by offender Kapil Mishra who had been accused of inciting violence. This report may be read here. In fact Sabrangindia also reported on a viral video of hate-offender Kapil Mishra –then making the rounds on social media—in which Mishra is heard inciting communal hate in a speech he made on April 10, 2022 Ram Navami, around the same time that the Khargone violence took place 40 kms away. Reports on this brand of hate speech may be read here.

A case born out of one of 2022’s consequential communal flashpoints

The prosecution arose from the communal violence that erupted in Khargone on April 10, 2022, during a Ram Navami procession. The clashes quickly escalated into a politically charged incidents. Houses, shops and vehicles were damaged, police personnel, including the district Superintendent of Police, were injured, curfew was imposed, internet services were suspended and additional police forces were deployed across the district. What followed transformed the incident from a law-and-order issue into a national constitutional debate.

Within forty-eight hours of the violence, the Madhya Pradesh government launched a demolition drive targeting dozens of homes and commercial establishments allegedly linked to those accused of participating in the riots. Bulldozers rolled into predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods, demolishing structures that authorities claimed were illegally constructed.

Images of homes being razed spread across the country, prompting fierce criticism from civil liberties groups, constitutional scholars and opposition parties, who argued that the demolitions amounted to punishment without trial. The State, however, maintained that the structures violated municipal laws and denied carrying out any punitive exercise.

Notably, barely a day after communal clashes erupted during a Ram Navami procession in Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone, the district administration demolished 16 houses and 29 shops in five areas across the town. According to a report in Indian Express, MP’s Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had said that “a claims tribunal” would be formed and action taken against rioters. His colleague, Home Minister Narottam Mishra issued a warning, saying, “Jis ghar se pathar aaye hain, us ghar ko hi patharon kaa dher banaenge (We will turn the houses from where the stones were pelted to a heap of rubble).”

Detailed reports from Sabrangindia may be read here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

The demolitions soon became one of the defining symbols of what came to be described as “bulldozer justice”—a practice that would later become the subject of repeated constitutional challenges before the Supreme Court.

Detailed report on the bulldozer judgment as well as the prevalence of the bulldozer’s misuse may be read here and here respectively.

Against this backdrop, the criminal prosecutions arising from the Khargone violence acquired significance well beyond the fate of individual accused persons. They became central to assessing whether the State’s extraordinary post-riot response rested on investigations capable of withstanding judicial scrutiny.

The present judgment offers one of the clearest judicial examinations of that question. In a detailed judgment delivered on July 27, Fourth Additional Sessions Judge Mukesh Nath concluded that while the prosecution successfully established that extensive rioting, arson and destruction of property had indeed occurred in Khargone’s Bhatwadi locality, it failed to prove that the eleven accused before the court were the perpetrators of those offences.

The judgment is significant not because it questions the occurrence of communal violence, but because it reiterates a foundational principle of criminal jurisprudence—that conviction must rest on legally admissible and reliable evidence establishing the guilt of identified accused persons, and not merely on proof that a crime took place.

Charges against the accused

As stated below the prosecution, the charge sheet, alleged that the eleven Muslim men, along with several unidentified persons, formed an unlawful assembly during the communal violence that erupted in Khargone on April 10, 2022. According to the prosecution, the accused were part of a mob armed with stones, swords, sticks and petrol bombs that attacked Hindu homes in Bhatwadi locality, vandalised residential properties, burnt vehicles, trespassed into houses and endangered the lives of residents.

Charges were framed under Sections 147, 148, 149, 336, 427, 435, 436 and 450 of the Indian Penal Code, along with Sections 3 and 4 of the Explosive Substances Act, 1908. The prosecution also alleged that the accused acted in furtherance of a common object, attracting the principle of vicarious liability under Section 149 IPC.

The FIR itself was registered on April 12, 2022, on the basis of multiple written complaints submitted by residents alleging attacks on their homes during the Ram Navami procession. The complainants alleged that members of the mob hurled stones and petrol bombs, set houses and motorcycles ablaze, destroyed household articles and looted valuables.

The prosecution established the violence—but not the perpetrators

One of the most striking aspects of the judgment is the distinction drawn by the Sessions Court between proving the occurrence of the offence and proving the identity of those responsible. The Court found that the prosecution had successfully established that widespread communal violence had occurred in Bhatwadi locality. The testimony of residents, seizure memos, spot inspections and damage assessment reports consistently demonstrated that houses were attacked, windows shattered, vehicles burnt and substantial property damage caused during the violence. The defence did not seriously dispute these aspects of the prosecution’s case.

The Court therefore accepted that a violent mob had attacked several residential properties and that the complainants had suffered significant losses. However, criminal liability required considerably more. The central issue before the Court, it held, was not whether communal violence occurred, but whether the prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt that these eleven accused were members of the mob responsible for those acts.

Dismantling of the evidence against the accused

Eight eyewitnesses abandoned the prosecution’s case: The prosecution examined thirteen witnesses during trial, of whom eleven were projected as eyewitnesses. The Court found that eight of those eleven witnesses completely failed to support the prosecution insofar as the identity of the accused was concerned. These witnesses, including complainants themselves, did not identify any of the accused before the Court, did not attribute any overt act to them and, according to the judgment, no incriminating material emerged against the accused even after the prosecution declared them hostile and cross-examined them.

Judge Nath observed that despite extensive questioning by the prosecution, these witnesses did not provide any evidence linking the accused persons to the alleged offences. Their testimony established only that violence had occurred—not who had committed it. This finding substantially weakened the prosecution’s case because many of these witnesses were themselves the victims whose homes had allegedly been attacked. The Court therefore held that the prosecution had failed to derive any evidentiary benefit from a substantial portion of its own witnesses.

The prosecution’s case ultimately rested on a single witness. With eight eyewitnesses failing to implicate the accused, the prosecution’s case effectively rested upon one witness—Vaishnavi Jain (PW-6). According to the prosecution, Vaishnavi witnessed the accused attacking houses, breaking doors, setting vehicles on fire and entering residential premises. She claimed to have identified all eleven accused in court and alleged that they were among those participating in the violence. The Court acknowledged that conviction can legally rest upon the testimony of a solitary witness. However, the decisive question was whether that testimony inspired confidence.

Far from treating the evidence of a sole eyewitness with suspicion merely because she was alone, the Court undertook an extensive examination of whether her testimony satisfied the standards of reliability required under criminal law. It ultimately concluded that it did not.

Prosecution’s sole eyewitness subjected to rigorous scrutiny: Having found that eight of the prosecution’s eleven eyewitnesses failed to implicate the accused, the Court turned to examine whether the testimony of the remaining witness, Vaishnavi Jain (PW-6), could independently sustain a conviction. The Court began by reiterating that there is no legal requirement that every criminal case must be supported by multiple eyewitnesses. Relying on the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Vadivelu Thevar v. State of Madras (AIR 1957 SC 614), Judge Mukesh Nath observed that Section 134 of the Indian Evidence Act makes it clear that evidence must be weighed, not counted. A conviction can lawfully rest upon the testimony of a single witness if the Court finds that witness to be wholly reliable and trustworthy. Conversely, where the testimony is doubtful or falls into the category of “neither wholly reliable nor wholly unreliable,” courts are expected to seek corroboration before recording a conviction.

Thus, the Court did not reject Vaishnavi Jain’s evidence merely because she was the only eyewitness supporting the prosecution. Instead, it undertook an extensive assessment of whether her testimony inspired confidence. Ultimately, it concluded that it did not. One of the principal infirmities identified by the Court was that Vaishnavi Jain attributed a collective role to all eleven accused without identifying the specific acts allegedly committed by each individual.

According to her deposition, all eleven accused arrived armed with swords, sticks, stones and petrol bombs, vandalised houses, burnt vehicles, broke doors and entered residential premises. However, the Court observed that she did not specify which accused committed which act, nor did she distinguish the role of any individual despite attributing the entire incident to all eleven persons simultaneously.

The Court held that where criminal liability is sought to be fixed upon identified individuals, especially in a prosecution involving allegations of rioting and unlawful assembly, such sweeping and undifferentiated assertions require careful scrutiny. The absence of any individual attribution assumed greater significance when no other eyewitness corroborated her version.

Contradictions regarding the time and sequence of events: The Court also found substantial inconsistencies within Vaishnavi’s own testimony. In her examination-in-chief, she stated that around 3:00 p.m., the accused pelted stones at houses opposite her residence before leaving, and that they returned between 6:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., armed with weapons and petrol bombs, when they allegedly attacked houses and entered her residence. However, during cross-examination she stated that around 4:00 p.m., only three or four persons came, threw stones and left, while simultaneously admitting that she did not actually see those persons while they were throwing stones.

The Sessions Court held that these inconsistencies were not minor discrepancies arising from lapse of memory. Instead, they directly affected the prosecution’s narrative regarding when the attack occurred, how many persons were involved and whether the witness actually observed the assailants.

The Court found the basis of identification unreliable: Perhaps the most significant aspect of the judgment concerns the Court’s assessment of identification evidence. Vaishnavi claimed that although she did not know the accused by name, she recognised all eleven accused by face because she had frequently seen them sitting at a paan shop, puncture repair shop and neighbourhood square. The Court carefully examined this explanation against the surrounding evidence. It found several inconsistencies.

While Vaishnavi initially stated that the accused were residents of her locality, the evidence on record showed that the accused actually belonged to Miyaman Mohalla and Kalali Mohalla, whereas she resided in Bhatwadi locality. During cross-examination, she alternately claimed that they lived behind her house before admitting she did not know whether several accused resided in Miyaman Mohalla. She also accepted that the paan shop and puncture repair shop from which she allegedly recognised the accused were not visible from her residence and were not situated immediately adjacent to her house.

These contradictions, according to the Court, substantially weakened the very foundation of her claimed familiarity with the accused. If the witness neither knew the accused personally nor consistently established how she recognised them, the Court held that her in-court identification became difficult to accept as reliable.

Judge Nath therefore concluded that the basis of identification advanced by the witness was not sufficiently credible to safely sustain criminal conviction.

Material contradictions within the same family: The Court attached considerable importance to the fact that Vaishnavi’s testimony was contradicted by the evidence of her own father and brother, both of whom were also examined by the prosecution. According to Vaishnavi, all eleven accused participated in the attack.

Her brother Akash Jain (PW-10), however, testified that only four or five persons were involved in pelting stones at the house. More importantly, Akash stated that the assailants had covered their faces with cloth, because of which he could not identify them. He specifically stated that he was unable to recognise the persons who attacked his house.

Similarly, Vaishnavi’s father, Dinesh Jain (PW-7), admitted during cross-examination that the rioters had cloth tied over their faces. He further acknowledged that he had viewed the attackers only from a considerable distance and was unable to state who among them had thrown stones, committed arson or looted property. The Court observed that these inconsistencies were not peripheral.

If two members of the same family consistently stated that the assailants had concealed their faces, it became difficult to accept Vaishnavi’s assertion that she had clearly recognised all eleven accused by face during a rapidly unfolding riot situation. Accordingly, the Court held that these inter se contradictions among closely related witnesses significantly undermined the credibility of the prosecution’s only identifying eyewitness.

Identification from 500–600 metres found inherently improbable: The Court also carefully analysed the evidence of Dinesh Jain regarding identification. Although Dinesh stated that he recognised the accused in court, he simultaneously admitted that he had witnessed the incident from a distance of approximately 500 to 600 metres, had no prior personal acquaintance with the accused, and could not state who specifically had burnt the doors, thrown stones or committed looting.

Judge Nath observed that identification of persons within a large violent mob from such a distance was inherently unnatural, particularly where the witness himself admitted that the rioters had their faces covered. The Court therefore refused to treat Dinesh Jain’s testimony as reliable evidence establishing the identity of the accused. The cumulative effect of these contradictions, the Court held, was that the prosecution had failed to present a single eyewitness whose testimony could safely form the basis of conviction beyond reasonable doubt.

Unexplained delay in recording the sole eyewitness’s statement: Apart from the inconsistencies in Vaishnavi Jain’s testimony, the Court found the manner in which the investigation was conducted to be equally problematic. A significant factor that weighed against the prosecution was the unexplained delay of 51 days in recording the statement of its only eyewitness.

The incident occurred on April 10, 2022. However, Vaishnavi Jain’s statement under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure was recorded only on May 31, 2022. The Court noted that the prosecution offered no explanation whatsoever as to why the statement of a witness, who was ultimately projected as the principal eyewitness to the entire occurrence, was recorded nearly two months after the incident.

The Court observed that unexplained delays in recording the statement of a material eyewitness assume considerable importance in criminal trials because they create the possibility of embellishment, tutoring or afterthought. While delay alone may not necessarily render a witness unreliable, the absence of any explanation assumes significance when the witness becomes the sole basis for seeking conviction. The Sessions Court therefore treated the delay as one more circumstance casting doubt on the prosecution’s case rather than an isolated procedural irregularity.

Absence of the sole eyewitness was absent from every contemporaneous complaint: The Court also found it significant that none of the six written complaints submitted immediately after the violence referred to Vaishnavi Jain as an eyewitness. The prosecution case originated from multiple written complaints submitted on 12 April 2022, two days after the communal violence. These complaints formed the basis of the FIR.

Despite the detailed allegations contained in those complaints, not one complaint identified Vaishnavi Jain as someone who had personally witnessed the attack. Her name did not appear as an eyewitness in any of the written complaints, nor was she mentioned in the FIR that was subsequently registered on their basis.

The Court held that where an individual is later projected as the prosecution’s only direct eyewitness, the complete absence of any reference to that witness in the earliest version of events becomes a relevant circumstance while assessing credibility. Coupled with the unexplained 51-day delay in recording her statement, the omission strengthened the Court’s conclusion that her claim of being an eyewitness appeared doubtful.

Absence of a Test Identification Parade: Perhaps the most damaging investigative lapse identified by the Court was the complete absence of a Test Identification Parade (TIP). The Court noted that although the prosecution relied heavily on identification evidence, no witness was ever asked to identify the accused during the investigation.

Vaishnavi Jain identified the accused for the first time inside the courtroom. The Court observed that first-time identification in court ordinarily carries significantly less evidentiary value, particularly where the witness had not previously known the accused personally and where the incident involved a large, violent mob. In such cases, a properly conducted Test Identification Parade serves as an important investigative safeguard by testing the witness’s ability to identify the alleged perpetrators independently and without suggestion.

In the present case, however, no such exercise was undertaken. The Court therefore held that the prosecution had failed to establish how or on what basis the investigating agency concluded that the eleven accused were among the persons who participated in the violence.

No explanation for implicating five of the accused later: The Court also scrutinised the manner in which the accused were arrayed in the charge-sheet. While six accused were named in the FIR, five additional persons were subsequently chargesheeted. However, the prosecution failed to explain how these additional accused came to be identified during investigation. The Court records in its judgment that no witness identified them, no Test Identification Parade was conducted, no documentary or electronic evidence linked them to the crime, and the investigating officer did not explain the evidentiary basis on which these additional accused were implicated.

The Court therefore observed that there was no discernible investigative foundation for prosecuting these five individuals. More broadly, the Court found that the prosecution had failed to explain how, from a crowd estimated by witnesses themselves to consist of nearly fifty persons, investigators concluded that these eleven individuals, and no others, were responsible for the offences alleged.

Photographic evidence failed to implicate the accused: The prosecution also relied upon photographs extracted during investigation. However, the Court held that this evidence was of little assistance.

First, the photographs were not accompanied by a certificate under Section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act, affecting their admissibility as electronic evidence. Secondly, even assuming they were admissible, none of the accused were visible in the photographs. Accordingly, the Court held that the photographs merely depicted the aftermath of the violence and did not connect any of the accused with the commission of the offences.

Forensic evidence contradicted the prosecution’s allegation of petrol bombs: The prosecution consistently alleged that the mob had used petrol bombs to set fire to houses and vehicles. To substantiate this allegation, investigators seized broken glass bottles and burnt residue from various locations and forwarded the material to the State Forensic Science Laboratory at Sagar. However, the forensic examination did not support the prosecution’s narrative.

According to the FSL report, no residue of inflammable petroleum hydrocarbons—including petrol, diesel or kerosene—was detected in the seized material. The Court observed that this scientific evidence directly undermined one of the prosecution’s central allegations—that petrol bombs had been used during the attacks. While the Court did not hold that no arson had occurred, it concluded that the prosecution had failed to establish, through reliable scientific evidence, that explosive substances or petrol bombs had in fact been used by the accused. Consequently, the offences under the Explosive Substances Act also remained unproved beyond reasonable doubt.

Benefit of doubt and prolonged incarceration

Having analysed the evidence cumulatively, the Court concluded that the prosecution had failed to establish the identity and participation of the accused beyond reasonable doubt. Judge Mukesh Nath accordingly acquitted all eleven accused of offences under Sections 147, 148, 336, 427, 435, 436 and 450 read with Section 149 IPC, as well as Sections 3 and 4 of the Explosive Substances Act, extending to them the benefit of doubt.

The judgment also records that the accused had already undergone substantial periods of incarceration during investigation and trial, ranging from 462 days to 827 days before being released on bail. Two of the accused remained in custody for over 827 days, while several others spent well over a year and a half in prison before trial concluded.

A judgment reaffirming the burden of proof in riot prosecutions

The judgment is notable for the distinction it draws between proving the occurrence of violence and proving the criminal liability of identified individuals. The Court expressly accepted that serious communal violence, arson and large-scale destruction occurred in Khargone’s Bhatwadi locality on 10 April 2022. What remained unproved, however, was whether the eleven accused standing trial were members of the mob responsible for those offences.

Rather than questioning the occurrence of the violence itself, the acquittal rests on familiar principles of criminal law: that suspicion, however grave, cannot substitute proof; that identification evidence must withstand careful scrutiny; that investigative lapses can materially weaken a prosecution; and that conviction must be founded on evidence establishing guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

The judgment also arrives against the broader backdrop of the 2022 Khargone violence, which was followed by controversial demolition drives targeting properties alleged to belong to persons involved in the riots. One such challenge, filed by a Khargone resident who alleged that his property was demolished because he belonged to the Muslim community, remains pending before the Madhya Pradesh High Court. The petitioner has contended that the demolition formed part of the State’s post-riot crackdown and relied upon public statements by senior government functionaries attributing responsibility for the violence to members of the Muslim community.

By ultimately acquitting the accused after finding fundamental deficiencies in the prosecution’s evidence, the Sessions Court’s decision underscores that even in prosecutions arising from communal violence, constitutional guarantees of fair trial and the criminal law’s insistence on proof beyond reasonable doubt remain the governing standards.

Court distinguished proof of participation from proof of guilt

An important thread running through the judgment is the distinction between establishing that communal violence occurred and proving the participation of specific individuals in that violence. The Court repeatedly observed that there was little dispute that rioting, stone-pelting, vandalism and arson had taken place in Khargone on 10 April 2022. Multiple witnesses described attacks on residential properties, damaged houses and burnt vehicles. However, the Court emphasised that these facts, by themselves, could not justify convicting the eleven accused unless their individual involvement was established through reliable evidence.

This distinction is central to criminal jurisprudence. The judgment reiterates that criminal courts are concerned not merely with whether an offence occurred, but whether the prosecution has proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that the persons standing trial committed that offence. The existence of a violent mob, therefore, did not automatically establish the culpability of every individual arraigned before the Court.

The Court found the prosecution failed to establish unlawful assembly against the accused

The prosecution invoked Sections 147 and 148 IPC (rioting), along with Section 149 IPC, which creates vicarious liability for every member of an unlawful assembly acting in prosecution of its common object. However, before Section 149 can be invoked, the prosecution must first establish that the accused were themselves members of the unlawful assembly. The Sessions Court held that this foundational requirement remained unproved.

Since the prosecution failed to reliably identify the accused as members of the alleged mob, the statutory presumption of collective liability under Section 149 could not be invoked. Consequently, the charges under Sections 336, 427, 435 and 436 read with Section 149 also failed. Although the judgment does not elaborate separately on the legal ingredients of Section 149, its reasoning effectively reflects the settled principle that vicarious criminal liability cannot arise unless membership of the unlawful assembly itself is first established.

The Court repeatedly criticised the investigation rather than merely the evidence

While acquitting the accused, the Court’s criticism extended beyond witness testimony to the manner in which the investigation itself was conducted.

Throughout the judgment, Judge Mukesh Nath identified several investigative deficiencies:

• failure to explain the delay in lodging the FIR;
• failure to explain the 51-day delay in recording the statement of the prosecution’s principal eyewitness;
• failure to conduct any Test Identification Parade;
• failure to explain how five additional accused were implicated despite not being named in the FIR;
• failure to produce evidence establishing the basis on which investigators selected these eleven individuals from a crowd estimated to comprise around fifty persons.

Rather than viewing these lapses in isolation, the Court assessed their cumulative effect. It held that these deficiencies substantially undermined the prosecution’s ability to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The judgment therefore illustrates how procedural shortcomings during investigation can have a decisive impact on the prosecution’s case at trial.

The judgment carefully applied the law on sole eyewitness testimony

A notable feature of the judgment is that the Court did not insist upon corroboration merely because there was only one eyewitness. Instead, it correctly applied the principles laid down by the Supreme Court in Vadivelu Thevar v. State of Madras. The Court recognised three categories of witnesses identified in that decision:

• wholly reliable;
• wholly unreliable; and
• neither wholly reliable nor wholly unreliable.

Having analysed Vaishnavi Jain’s testimony in detail, the Sessions Court concluded that it fell into the third category. Her evidence was not rejected outright, but the Court found that it suffered from material inconsistencies, lacked independent corroboration and was surrounded by circumstances that rendered it unsafe to rely upon as the sole basis for conviction. The judgment therefore reflects a cautious application of established evidentiary principles rather than the creation of any new legal standard.

A reminder that criminal trials test evidence—not public narratives

Although the judgment is confined to the evidence led during trial, it inevitably unfolds against the larger backdrop of one of Madhya Pradesh’s most contentious episodes of communal violence. The Khargone violence was followed by sweeping police action, multiple criminal prosecutions and demolition drives targeting properties alleged to belong to the Muslim individuals involved in the violence.

Against this backdrop, the acquittal does not amount to a judicial finding that no violence occurred or that no offences were committed. Instead, it underscores a narrower but constitutionally significant proposition: that criminal courts adjudicate individual guilt on the basis of legally admissible evidence, and not on the basis of the broader public narrative surrounding communal violence. It also raises the fundamental issue of a taint or bias on part of law enforcement agencies that, in India, during the charged atmosphere during communal violence, bow to majoritarian state or non-state pressures and arrest or penalise only men from minority communities.

Beyond the evidentiary deficiencies that led to the acquittal, the judgment also brings into sharp focus the human cost of a prosecution that ultimately failed to meet the threshold of proof required in criminal law. The eleven accused remained in judicial custody for periods ranging from 462 to 827 days during the course of the investigation and trial before being acquitted after the prosecution failed to establish their guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

The acquittal therefore raises broader constitutional concerns about the protection of individual liberty within the criminal justice system. Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees that no person shall be deprived of personal liberty except according to procedure established by law, while the presumption of innocence remains a foundational principle of criminal jurisprudence until guilt is established through a fair trial. Where individuals spend years in incarceration before a court concludes that the prosecution failed to prove even their identification beyond reasonable doubt, the case illustrates the profound consequences that deficient investigations can have on these constitutional guarantees.

The complete judgment may be read below.

Related:

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Demolitions of homes of Gujjar Bakerwals in Jammu unconstitutional & violation of FRA 2006: AIUFWP

Rebuild or Compensate: Nagpur HC confronts NMC over ‘bulldozer’ demolition in riot case

Demolition of Adivasi homes at Sanjay Gandhi National Park on Republic Day

Faiz-e-Ilahi Masjid, Turkman Gate: A court-ordered demolition, midnight policing, stone-pelting, arrests, and the ongoing legal battle

The post Khargone riots case collapses: Four years after Ram Navami violence, MP court acquits 11 accused, finds prosecution failed to establish guilt appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Yet the order is equally notable for what it leaves untouched. While expressing sufficient doubt about the conduct of law enforcement to contemplate an independent investigation, the Court simultaneously permits the same police machinery to continue investigating protesters under the FIRs already registered. It further conditions its interim protection upon the absence of “criminal antecedents”, effectively creating two classes of protesters for the purposes of constitutional relief. Read closely, the order reveals not merely judicial caution but an unresolved constitutional contradiction that lies at the heart of the litigation.

From a challenge to police violence in Delhi to a nationwide constitutional controversy

The hearing itself reflected how dramatically the litigation has expanded since the events at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on July 20. What began as petitions concerning police action in the national capital has evolved into a challenge to policing practices across multiple States. The Bench, comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana, heard petitions alleging police brutality in Delhi, Bihar, Maharashtra, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Kerala, alongside petitions filed on behalf of injured police personnel, journalists and individual protesters. The order correspondingly issues notice not only to the Union and the Government of NCT of Delhi but also to the Chief Secretaries of the seven States where similar allegations have arisen, making it clear that any eventual investigation may extend well beyond Delhi.

The courtroom exchanges demonstrated that the litigation had also moved beyond disputes over individual incidents. As reported by LiveLaw, Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan argued that the issue before the Court was systemic rather than episodic, referring to alleged departures from established crowd-control protocols, the deployment of plain-clothes police personnel and the need for an investigation independent of the very agencies accused of violence. Senior Advocate Shyam Divan drew attention to allegations of electronic shock batons, assaults on women protesters and threats allegedly issued by police personnel. Senior Advocate Shadan Farasat highlighted the continued detention of minors in Bihar despite the State’s announcement that cases would be withdrawn, reported LiveLaw. Advocate Prashant Bhushan referred to the petition of Junaid Malik, who alleged illegal detention, harassment and police action against his family. On the other side, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta accepted that allegations concerning injuries to students required serious examination but maintained that “anti-social elements” had infiltrated the protests and that hundreds of police personnel had themselves suffered injuries.

It was against this backdrop that the Chief Justice repeatedly observed that the Court was confronted with two competing narratives, each accusing the other of serious violence. The question, therefore, was not simply whether police had used excessive force or whether protesters had attacked police personnel, but whether either version could be accepted without an investigation independent of those directly involved. That concern ultimately shaped the Court’s reasoning.

The Court’s recognition of a prima facie case is constitutionally significant

The order carefully records the allegations placed before the Court. It refers to the alleged use of pellet guns causing severe injuries, including the loss of eyesight of one student, the deployment of rubber bullets, electronic batons and nail-studded lathis, assaults by police personnel both in uniform and in civilian dress, and attacks on members of the media. At the same time, it records allegations that police personnel suffered serious injuries owing to stone-pelting and violence allegedly perpetrated by protesters or anti-social elements. Rather than accepting either version, the Court concludes that the material placed before it establishes a “compelling case” for an independent and impartial investigation capable of addressing both sets of allegations. This finding carries greater constitutional significance than the interim directions themselves.

Ordinarily, investigations conducted by the police are presumed to possess institutional legitimacy. Constitutional courts do not lightly transfer investigations or contemplate court-monitored inquiries. Such departures occur only where the Court concludes that confidence in the ordinary investigative process has been sufficiently undermined. The very logic behind an SIT is that the institutional mechanisms ordinarily entrusted with criminal investigation may not command public confidence in exceptional circumstances. The Court’s observation that an independent investigation may be necessary is therefore, in itself, a recognition that the allegations against law enforcement cannot simply be left to the agencies whose conduct has come under challenge. That premise, however, sits uneasily with the operative directions that follow.

The order simultaneously questions and preserves the ordinary criminal process

Despite concluding that the allegations disclose a prima facie case warranting an independent investigation, the Court expressly permits Delhi and all concerned States to continue investigating the FIRs already registered in connection with the protests. The only restriction imposed is that “no coercive measures” shall be taken against protesting students, subject to an important qualification discussed later.

“(iv) The NCT of Delhi and other States may proceed with the investigation of the FIRs registered; however, no coercive measures shall be taken against the protesting students. Such protection, nonetheless, shall not be extended to the persons with criminal antecedents.” (Para 8)

This aspect of the order deserves closer attention than it has received. The Court does not stay the FIRs; it does not transfer the investigations or direct that future investigative steps be undertaken by an independent agency. Instead, the police authorities whose conduct is alleged to require independent scrutiny continue to exercise the full range of investigative powers available under criminal law. Statements may still be recorded, electronic devices may still be seized and examined, witnesses may still be questioned, forensic reports may still be prepared, and charge-sheets may continue to take shape.

The Court thus creates a constitutional arrangement in which two investigations are expected to proceed simultaneously: one, a proposed independent inquiry into police conduct; the other, the ordinary police investigation into the conduct of protesters. The order never explains how these two processes are to coexist.

This is not merely a procedural curiosity. Criminal investigations shape the evidentiary record. They determine which witnesses are examined, what evidence is collected, how events are reconstructed and ultimately which narrative enters the criminal justice system. If the Court considers the neutrality of the ordinary investigative process sufficiently doubtful to contemplate an independent investigation, it is difficult to understand why that same process should continue exercising authority over the protesters arising out of the same sequence of events. The contradiction is never confronted.

“No coercive measures” does not suspend the coercive force of criminal process

The Court’s direction that no coercive measures shall be taken against protesting students has understandably attracted public attention. Yet, as a matter of constitutional law, the protection is considerably narrower than it first appears. Orders restraining coercive action ordinarily operate against arrest or similarly drastic steps. They do not suspend investigation itself. Nor do they prevent repeated summons, compulsory appearances before investigating officers, seizure of electronic devices, extraction of digital data, surveillance, examination of social media activity or the continuing collection of evidence. The distinction is significant in cases concerning political protest.

The chilling effect upon constitutional freedoms is produced not only by arrest but by the criminal process itself. A protester compelled to repeatedly appear before investigating agencies, surrender personal devices or remain subject to an ongoing criminal investigation continues to bear the burden of state action irrespective of whether arrest is immediately threatened. The Court therefore restrains one manifestation of coercion while leaving intact the broader investigative machinery through which coercion may continue to operate.

If the purpose of the interim order is to ensure that constitutional rights remain meaningful while allegations of police excess are independently examined, it is not immediately apparent why the continuation of the ordinary criminal process should remain unaffected.

The exception for “criminal antecedents” undermines the logic of constitutional protection

Perhaps the most constitutionally troubling aspect of the order is the qualification that protection against coercive action shall not extend to persons with criminal antecedents. The same qualification also governs the release of detained children. 

The order does not explain what constitutes a criminal antecedent. Nor does it distinguish between previous convictions and pending criminal cases. However, that omission is significant. In practice, the expression “criminal antecedents” is routinely employed by investigating agencies to refer not only to persons previously convicted of offences but also to individuals against whom criminal proceedings are pending or FIRs have previously been registered. For those engaged in political mobilisation, this distinction assumes particular importance.

Student leaders, trade union organisers, civil rights activists and political workers frequently accumulate criminal cases because they repeatedly participate in demonstrations. Many such prosecutions culminate in acquittal or remain pending for years without adjudication. The mere existence of previous criminal proceedings therefore cannot be equated with criminality. Yet the Court’s formulation effectively permits previous executive allegations to determine the scope of present constitutional protection.

The result is that the protesters most likely to have prior experience with the criminal justice system, precisely because they have participated in earlier movements, become least likely to receive interim judicial protection. This sits uneasily with first principles of constitutional law- the presumption of innocence does not disappear because an individual has previously been named in an FIR. Nor are the guarantees of Articles 19 and 21 reserved only for first-time protesters. Constitutional rights do not fluctuate according to the number of criminal cases the State has chosen to register against a citizen. The Court’s order, however unintentionally, risks producing precisely that consequence.

The Court’s instinctive turn towards an SIT also deserves scrutiny

The Court’s indication that it may constitute a Special Investigation Team headed by a retired Supreme Court judge has naturally been welcomed as evidence of judicial seriousness. It is also entirely consistent with an increasingly familiar pattern in Indian constitutional adjudication. Whenever allegations involve politically sensitive policing, communal violence, custodial abuse or failures of ordinary investigation, constitutional litigation frequently culminates in demands for an SIT.

The institutional appeal of this mechanism is obvious. It reassures the public that the investigation will not remain entirely within the control of the executive while allowing the Court to maintain supervisory distance. Yet experience also warrants caution. An SIT is not itself a constitutional remedy. It is only an investigative mechanism.

Indian constitutional history is replete with court-monitored investigations that have extended over years, produced little by way of institutional accountability or concluded long after the immediate constitutional crisis had passed. Judicial supervision has not invariably translated into meaningful prosecutions, as one may understand with the SIT on Manipur violence. Nor have SITs consistently addressed questions of command responsibility, systemic policing failures or institutional reform. They frequently identify individual culpability while leaving broader structures of power untouched.

The Supreme Court’s growing reliance on SITs also reflects a deeper institutional tendency. Faced with allegations of executive misconduct, the Court increasingly responds by creating new investigative mechanisms rather than directly interrogating the legality of executive action or crafting structural constitutional remedies. An SIT may well uncover facts. It does not necessarily answer the constitutional questions that those facts reveal.

If the present litigation ultimately results only in another prolonged investigation, without examining the legality of protest policing, the use of force, surveillance practices, deployment of plain-clothes personnel or the repeated invocation of criminal law against dissent, the constitutional significance of the proceedings may prove considerably narrower than their immediate political importance.

Preserving evidence is necessary, but accountability requires more

Among the strongest features of the order are its directions preserving CCTV footage, drone recordings, body-camera footage, wireless communication records and PCR logs, alongside the prohibition on publishing protesters’ personal information. These directions recognise the centrality of digital evidence in contemporary protest litigation and respond to legitimate concerns regarding surveillance and the destruction of electronic records.

They are undoubtedly important; but they are also procedural safeguards. They preserve the possibility of accountability without guaranteeing accountability itself. The harder constitutional question remains unresolved. If the Court has already concluded that there exists a prima facie case warranting an independent investigation because the allegations against the police cannot be left to the ordinary investigative process, should that conclusion not also have consequences for the criminal investigations being conducted by the same police authorities?

The July 28 order does not answer that question. Instead, it reflects a familiar pattern in constitutional adjudication. The Court acknowledges serious allegations of state excess, preserves evidence, contemplates an independent investigation and grants carefully calibrated interim relief, but stops short of disrupting the ordinary machinery of criminal administration. Meanwhile, the more enduring constitutional issue, however, lies elsewhere. The order proceeds on the premise that police conduct is sufficiently doubtful to justify independent scrutiny, while simultaneously leaving the architecture of criminalisation almost entirely intact. 

The complete order may be read here. 

Detailed reports on the protests and the state violence may be read here, here, here, here and here. 

Related:

Maharashtra: After backlash, govt. moves to withdraw FIRs against student protesters but questions remain

Governments begin rolling back cases against protesters, but questions over violence, arrests and accountability remain

From Feeding Students to Fighting in the Supreme Court: The story of Mohammad Junaid Malik

A deleted tweet, an NSA order, and the shadow of past crackdowns

Youth Uprising: A protest, a brute crackdown, a continuing countrywide response

Mumbai stands with students, but the state pushes back

The exam crisis that became a battle for accountability

Brute Police Action: Mumbai’s crackdown on protestors in solidarity with CJP & Student Groups, AISF, SFI & AISA

The post The Supreme Court’s Uneasy Middle Path on Protest Policing appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Mohd Junaid Was Arranging Foods And Water At CJP Protest Since Day One.
जंतर मंतर प्रोटेस्ट में पहिले दिन से प्रदर्शनकारियों को खाना बांटने में सहयोग करने वाले मोहम्मद जुनैद भाई…@abhijeet_dipke @CJP_for_India @Cockroachisback pic.twitter.com/mpTcEEv44p

— khalid Chougle (@ChougleKhalid) July 25, 2026

मुहम्मद जुनैद के घर वालों को सिर्फ इसलिए पुलिस ने उठा लिया था, क्योंकि Mohammad Junaid ने जंतर मंतर में प्रदर्शनकारी छात्रों को 34 दिनों से खाना खिला रहे थे, पानी पिला रहे थे!

घर वालो का आधार कार्ड, पासपोर्ट, सब ज़ब्त कर लिया था पुलिस ने!

इस सरकार को हिन्दू-मुस्लिम की एकता नहीं… pic.twitter.com/QwU7BSXEEy

— Sadaf Afreen صدف (@s_afreen7) July 26, 2026

देश भर के छात्रों की सेवा के लिये लगातार मौजूद रहने वाले जुनैद को डिटेन करना और उनको परेशान करना इस सिस्टम का सबसे शर्मनाक चेहरा था, देश भर के लोग अपने अपने स्तर पर बच्चों की सेवा कर रहे थे, जुनैद ने भी इंसानियत के नाते छात्रों की मदद की।
सरकार से अनुरोध है कि ऑंदोलन में लोगों की… pic.twitter.com/vJ3GJW03aY

— Imran Pratapgarhi (@ShayarImran) July 27, 2026

The 26-year-old is a law graduate and a judicial services aspirant, and was not among the movement’s organisers. According to the petition he has now filed before the Supreme Court, he neither held any official position nor helped shape the protest’s strategy. His role was considerably simpler: feed people. Yet by the final week of July, the volunteer who had become known for distributing food had himself become one of the protest’s biggest stories, alleging illegal detention, intimidation and harassment of his family by police—a set of claims that are now before the Supreme Court.

The volunteer behind the community kitchen

Malik says he first arrived at Jantar Mantar after noticing that students camping at the protest lacked even basic drinking water in Delhi’s summer heat. As he told India Today, what began with a table of water bottles and biscuits gradually evolved into a volunteer-run kitchen serving tea, juice and food packets around the clock. The operation, he insisted, relied not on institutional funding but on ordinary people bringing supplies or contributing money for meals.

“People come on their own. Some bring food, others bring water. Our work is simply to organise everything and make sure nobody goes hungry,” he told India Today.

Over the next 35 days, according to his Supreme Court plea, Malik coordinated food and water distribution every day beginning June 20, 2026. Videos of the community kitchen spread widely across social media, earning him praise from students, volunteers and even “leaders” of the CJP, who publicly thanked him during the protest. For many following the agitation online, he became “the man feeding the students.”

The night everything changed  

That visibility, Malik now claims, also drew unwanted attention. As reported by LiveLaw, his petition states that after media coverage of the community kitchen, police repeatedly became interested in a single question: Who was paying for the food? According to Malik, the answer never changed. The meals, he says, were financed through public donations, volunteers and supporters who either transferred money or directly supplied food and water. There was no central financier.

According to Malik’s petition, the turning point came shortly after midnight on July 24. Having visited Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital for an anti-rabies injection after a dog bite, he says he was stopped while returning by men who identified themselves as Delhi Police officers. In interviews with India Today and The Lallantop, Malik alleged that he and others accompanying him were blindfolded, their phones seized and taken to an undisclosed location.

His petition before the Supreme Court provides a more detailed account. As per the LiveLaw report, he alleges he remained in police custody through the night, was compelled to unlock his mobile phone, had its contents examined, and was repeatedly questioned by senior officers about the funding behind the protest kitchen. The questioning, according to the petition, focused less on the food itself than on identifying those allegedly financing the wider protest. Malik claims officers threatened him with serious consequences, including possible action under the National Security Act. if he failed to reveal the source of funding. He says he consistently replied that there was no hidden financier, only ordinary citizens helping feed protesters.

Claims of harassment

After returning to Delhi, Malik defended his actions in a series of emotional media interviews. Speaking to India Today, he said: “I have zero criminal cases against me. I am not a criminal. We are only fighting for students.”

He added: “If giving someone food or drinking water is considered a crime, then I will commit that ‘crime’ a thousand times over.” The remark quickly became one of the most widely shared quotations associated with his case.

Malik’s allegations extend well beyond his own detention. His Supreme Court application says police questioned his father about family bank accounts, raided the family’s Ghaziabad residence, searched the house, demanded identity documents and financial records, and detained relatives in Meerut—all without legal paperwork or compliance with established procedure. The petition argues that these actions were intended to pressure him into abandoning the protest and disclosing its alleged funding network. Calling the actions an abuse of state power, the application says the treatment of his family violated their rights under Article 21 of the Constitution.

Police response

Police authorities have disputed significant parts of Malik’s account. According to a report by Scroll, Ghaziabad Police acknowledged questioning Malik’s father but denied arresting him, describing it as a routine inquiry. Mussoorie Police similarly confirmed questioning his father regarding financial sources before releasing him. Meerut Police denied detaining any of Malik’s relatives, while Delhi Police said it was looking into the allegations.

From volunteer to petitioner

Malik has now approached the Supreme Court through an intervention application in the writ petition filed by RJD MP Manoj Kumar Jha concerning alleged police excesses during the CJP protests. Filed through Advocate-on-Record Neha Rathi, the application seeks protection against further coercive action toward his family and asks the Court to ensure that any investigation complies strictly with the law.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Malik’s story is that he was never one of the protest’s public leaders. He did not deliver speeches, negotiate with officials or lead marches. Instead, his visibility came from doing something almost mundane—making sure students had food and water. By the time the protest entered the courtroom, however, the man remembered for handing out meals had himself become one of its most prominent litigants.

Malik’s story also raises uncomfortable questions about the intersection of protest, policing and religious identity. By his own account, he was not a student leader, political strategist or public face of the agitation; he was a volunteer running a community kitchen. Yet much of the scrutiny he describes, from repeated questions about who was funding the food to the alleged raids on his family’s home, came to centre on him. The fact that he is a Muslim became impossible to ignore, with the lingering suspicion that he had been singled out despite his role being limited to providing food and water. While the matter is now before the Supreme Court, Malik’s case has become emblematic, for many, of how an act of humanitarian solidarity can become entangled with suspicion when filtered through the lens of religious identity.

Related:

July 2026: A dissent that was brutally put down, a crackdown after the protest ended

A deleted tweet, an NSA order, and the shadow of past crackdowns

Youth Uprising: A protest, a brute crackdown, a continuing countrywide response

Mumbai stands with students, but the state pushes back

The exam crisis that became a battle for accountability

Brute Police Action: Mumbai’s crackdown on protestors in solidarity with CJP & Student Groups, AISF, SFI & AISA

Governments begin rolling back cases against protesters, but questions over violence, arrests and accountability remain

The post From Feeding Students to Fighting in the Supreme Court: The story of Mohammad Junaid Malik appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In a sense, the developments may mark a significant de-escalation after one of the country’s largest youth-led protest movements in recent years. Little moves for pinning individual or collective accountability on RAF/Police/Paramilitary inflicted violence have been witnessed though. This leaves unresolved questions about accountability of the state during peaceful protest.

Bihar: first state to formally withdraw cases

The Bihar Home Department on Monday issued a notification announcing that no punitive, retaliatory or other adverse legal action would be taken against anyone who participated in protests before 6 p.m. on July 26.

The government said it would immediately begin the legal process of withdrawing all FIRs, criminal complaints and show-cause notices linked to the demonstrations. Everyone arrested or detained in connection with those cases would be released, while the government also assured that no future action would be taken against protesters covered by the order. Past experiences of activists and protests movements however reveal many a slip between the cup on the lip: at the height of agitations when public anger and attention is trained on the issue being agitated, the state appears to “concede to its overreach;” once public attention –notoriously fickle shifts—the demeanour of the state hardens. It then becomes a herculean task to ensure that these promises are kept.

Be that as it may, the “prompt” announcement of case withdrawals this time came after sustained pressure from the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), the All India Students’ Association (AISA) and several student organisations, which had accused governments of reneging on commitments made during negotiations that led to the suspension of nationwide protests.

Neha Bora: “The movement will not stop”

AISA national president and JNU PhD scholar Neha Bora confirmed that Bihar’s notification followed a meeting between student representatives and Bihar Director General of Police Vinay Kumar.

Posting on X, Bora wrote: “Order of release of arrested students and withdrawal of cases has been notified following our meeting with Bihar DGP.”

संघर्ष तब तक जब तक आखिरी छात्र अपने घर नहीं पहुँच जाता है!

Order of release of arrested students and withdrawal of cases has been notified following our meeting with Bihar DGP pic.twitter.com/xxLL5y75FO

— Neha (@neha_aisa) July 27, 2026

However, she made clear that the notification alone would not end the agitation. Calling dissent a constitutional right rather than a crime, she said AISA would continue monitoring implementation of the government’s assurances until every detained student had been released. Even after welcoming Bihar’s notification, Bora maintained that AISA’s planned statewide protest on July 30 would remain in place until the government fully implements its commitments. At a press conference in Patna, Bora declared:

“Jab tak har arrested student protestor riha nahi hota, movement rukne wala nahi. The right to dissent is a constitutional right, not a crime. No government can take that away.”

AISA All India President Neha Bora (@neha_aisa) made it clear at a press conference in Patna today:

Jab tak har arrested student protestor riha nahi hota, movement rukne wala nahi.

The right to dissent is a constitutional right, not a crime. No government can take that away. pic.twitter.com/8vN0HEyfRK

— AISA (@aisa_official_) July 27, 2026

Assam follows with similar assurance

Hours later, the Assam government issued a similar press note. The state acknowledged that five criminal cases had been registered and 13 people arrested during the protests but announced that it would begin withdrawing those cases “as per law” while expediting the release of everyone arrested. The government further stated that it would initiate no further legal proceedings against those involved in the protests and would treat the matter as closed once the process is completed.

The Assam government’s announcement has also raised hopes for Monjur Rahman, Ashraful Islam and Abdul Kashem, the three young men arrested after allegedly attempting to organise a solidarity protest. As reported by The Wire, their families have maintained that the protest never even took place. With Assam now promising to withdraw protest-related cases and release those arrested, it remains to be seen whether their cases will also be withdrawn.

Bengal remains the key test

West Bengal is now the principal state where protesters continue to await a similar announcement. According to ThePrint, senior police officials indicated that while the government is examining the possibility of withdrawing protest-related cases, FIRs lodged by private complainants—including journalists alleging assault during the demonstrations—would likely require separate legal examination.

Meanwhile, The Hindu reported that Kolkata Police arrested two more people on Monday in connection with the July 24 Esplanade violence, taking the total number of arrests to sixteen. Responding to the developments, the Cockroach Janta Party publicly appealed to Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari to honour the assurances allegedly given during negotiations with Union ministers J.P. Nadda and Jitendra Singh by releasing all arrested protesters and withdrawing every pending FIR.

CJP says Delhi calm, updates expected from three states

Providing the latest organisational update in a video statement, CJP spokesperson Ratna Singh said the party expects official updates regarding FIR withdrawals and the release of detainees from West Bengal, Delhi and Maharashtra shortly. She added that, according to information received by the organisation, no fresh FIRs have been registered and no new detentions have taken place in Delhi since the agreement. Ratna also said the organisation had raised concerns with authorities over allegations that members of one particular community were being selectively targeted and harassed for participating in the protests.

According to her, officials assured CJP that clear instructions would be communicated to all police officers to prevent any such discrimination. She further disclosed that she had received complaints from Goa regarding the alleged harassment of a protest organiser and had requested the concerned authorities to examine the matter. The update was shared through her official post on X, where she wrote:

Update on FIR withdrawals and the release of detained/arrested individuals: We expect updates from West Bengal, Delhi, and Maharashtra shortly, and we will share them as soon as we receive them. Yesterday, we were informed that there are currently no fresh FIRs being registered or detentions taking place in Delhi. I also raised concerns that members of one particular community were allegedly targeted and harassed for participating in the protest. We were assured that clear instructions would be communicated to all officers to ensure this does not happen. As of now, there are no fresh FIRs in Delhi. I was also contacted regarding a similar issue in Goa, where an organiser is allegedly facing harassment. I have requested the concerned authorities to look into the matter.

Update on FIR withdrawals and the release of detained/arrested individuals:

We expect updates from West Bengal, Delhi, and Maharashtra shortly, and we will share them as soon as we receive them.

Yesterday, we were informed that there are currently no fresh FIRs being registered…

— Ratna Singh (@whattalawyer) July 28, 2026

Agreement must be honoured

The government notifications followed a public warning from the Cockroach Janta Party earlier on July 27. Addressing the media, CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka accused governments of violating the understanding reached after the Jantar Mantar protests by continuing arrests in Bihar and West Bengal while allegedly detaining volunteers in Delhi. He warned that unless FIRs were withdrawn immediately and governments stopped initiating fresh criminal proceedings, the organisation would be forced to resume nationwide protests.

Later that night, CJP spokesperson Saurav Das announced that government representatives, including Delhi Police officials, had met party leaders and shown them Bihar’s official notification confirming withdrawal of cases. Das said the organisation had also expressed concern over possible harassment of protesters across states and claimed that authorities assured them that appropriate instructions would be issued to prevent any retaliatory action.

Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal, who has been advising the organisation, said he would continue providing legal assistance to protesters. Alongside pressing governments to withdraw criminal proceedings, CJP announced a nationwide legal support initiative. The organisation has launched a public fundraising campaign to support injured protesters and those facing criminal proceedings. It has also established legal aid cells across India, with Kapil Sibal pledging ₹1 crore towards legal assistance while urging lawyers across districts to volunteer.

Additionally, CJP announced the launch of the Sakshi Portal, where photographs and videos documenting alleged police excesses during the protests can be uploaded for legal documentation.

Allegations of excessive force continue

Despite governments beginning to withdraw cases, allegations against police remain widespread. Ratna Singh alleged that volunteer lawyers are already assisting detainees in Assam, West Bengal and Bihar. She claimed that eleven people had been arrested in Kolkata, ten of whom belonged to the Muslim community, and alleged that stringent legal provisions were being considered against them.

She further alleged police brutality in Patna, Siwan and Chhapra, claiming that protesters had been booked under serious charges including attempted murder while cases had been registered against nearly 5,000 unidentified persons.

Following visits to detainees in Beur Jail, Neha Bora also alleged that arrested students described being abused, threatened with fake encounters and questioned about their religion and caste while in police custody. She further claimed that some detainees were labelled “terrorists” and “Naxalites.” Jail officials, however, assured her that students would receive all necessary assistance during their detention.

A fragile truce

While governments appear to be stepping back from criminal prosecution under public pressure, the violence witnessed during the protests remains an important part of the story. According to Bihar Police, 694 people were detained during the demonstrations. Of these, 339 students, women and minors were released after verification, while 355 individuals accused of involvement in violent incidents were produced before courts. Police stated that 91 personnel, including the Superintendents of Police of Siwan and Sitamarhi, sustained injuries during clashes. Authorities also reported that 14 police vehicles were damaged and one government vehicle was set ablaze.

One of the most controversial moments of the protests occurred in Bihar’s Siwan district, where Constable Abhishek Kumar was captured on video firing an AK-47 rifle into the air while attempting to disperse demonstrators. Bihar Police suspended the constable and ordered a departmental inquiry, confirming that four rounds were fired but stating that no injuries resulted from the incident.

Police action also extended into the digital space. According to ThePrint, Delhi Police approached X and Meta seeking removal of social media posts considered abusive towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other political leaders, describing the exercise as part of routine monitoring.

In Madhya Pradesh, content creator Yashpal Soni was booked over an Instagram reel allegedly containing abusive remarks directed at former Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and the BJP. Meanwhile, Kolkata Police registered a complaint after BJP leader Keya Ghosh alleged that actor Sreelekha Mitra displayed defamatory caricatures of the Prime Minister during a protest rally.

Detailed report may be read here.

For now, the immediate confrontation appears to be easing. Bihar and Assam stated that they will implement these commitments that student organisations say, formed the basis of the agreement reached with the Union government. Delhi, according to CJP, has not seen any fresh FIRs or detentions since the understanding was reached, while West Bengal and Maharashtra are expected to announce their positions shortly. Yet protest leaders insist the movement is far from over.

Both CJP and AISA say they will continue monitoring implementation of the government’s assurances until every arrested protester has been released, every pending FIR withdrawn and all allegations of harassment addressed.

The rollback of criminal proceedings may have reduced immediate tensions, but it does not resolve the deeper questions exposed by the protests: the limits of police force, accountability for violence committed during demonstrations, the treatment of detainees, and the balance between maintaining public order and safeguarding the constitutional right to peaceful dissent.

Other detailed reports may be read here, here, here and here.

Related:

A deleted tweet, an NSA order, and the shadow of past crackdowns

Youth Uprising: A protest, a brute crackdown, a continuing countrywide response

Mumbai stands with students, but the state pushes back

The exam crisis that became a battle for accountability

Brute Police Action: Mumbai’s crackdown on protestors in solidarity with CJP & Student Groups, AISF, SFI & AISA

The post Governments begin rolling back cases against protesters, but questions over violence, arrests and accountability remain appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A protest is a strange, difficult thing to be inside. It looks, from the outside, like a single body moving with a single will, but anyone who has actually stood in one knows it is nothing of the sort. It is a loose weave of grandmothers who came because a grandchild was picked up, students who saved a week of bus fare to be there, farmers who slept in trucks to be there, office workers who slipped out at lunch, drifters who came for the free water, agitators who came for the fight, and thousands of ordinary people who simply felt they could not stay silent any longer. It is tired feet and dry throats and long stretches of nothing happening. It is chants that rise and fall for no clear reason. It is bad information travelling faster than good information. It is fear and hope tangled together in the same body. What a protest is not, almost ever, is a coordinated attack on the state. And yet the standard institutional response of the Indian state, across governments and across decades, has been to treat it as exactly that.

Also, a celebration is in order. A celebration of the grit and courage the youth of this country has shown in the face of government apathy and violence by the police, all of it leading to resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, a powerful union minister in the NDA III government.

While the main anchor entity of the movement Cockroach Janata Party has declared that government will withdraw FIRs against the protestors, a question on the responsibility for the violence against the protestors remains i.e., why were the peaceful protestors dealt with such violence to the extent of pellet guns, by the Delhi Police—a police department that works under the control of the Central Government (Home Ministry). That again begs a more structural question. How did India end up with a civilian police that is capable of unleashing such violence on peaceful protestors and since such violence is not new, how should the system be reformed?

This is the starting point from which any serious reform conversation has to begin, because the failure of Indian crowd control is not primarily a failure of individual officers behaving badly. It is a failure of an institution that has never fully accepted that a citizen with a grievance is not the same thing as an enemy of the state.

Where does the problem lie?

The Police Act of 1861 was written in the wake of 1857 with the explicit purpose of controlling a hostile native population, and its basic architecture, a paramilitary force accountable upward to the political executive rather than outward to the public, granted enormous statutory discretion and almost no statutory duty, remains largely intact. The Supreme Court’s Prakash Singh judgment of 2006 tried to open a window wherein it fixed tenures for senior officers, separation of investigation from law and order, independent complaints authorities. Every state has technically complied and almost every state has hollowed out that compliance in practice. Complaints authorities exist on paper with no staff, no budget, and no independence; officers are transferred within months of politically inconvenient decisions; the political control that Prakash Singh tried to loosen has, in many states, actually tightened. Reform in India has developed a peculiar shape wherein the letter of change manifests without the substance of it.

But locating the entire problem in colonial history is too easy, because it lets the last seventy-eight years off the hook. Post-independence India has added its own pathologies to the colonial skeleton. The most important of these is that the police have become a resource that ruling parties at the state level deploy against political opposition, and the crowd-handling function has become the sharpest edge of that deployment. A sub-inspector on the ground has almost unlimited discretion to declare an assembly unlawful under what is now Section 148 of the BNSS, to order a baton charge, to fire tear gas. There are no binding directions, no codified escalation ladder, and no procedural check that must be cleared before force is used. The following is what Section 148 (1) of the BNSS states:

Any Executive Magistrate or officer in charge of a police station or, in the absence of such officer in charge, any police officer, not below the rank of a sub-inspector, may command any unlawful assembly, or any assembly of five or more persons likely to cause a disturbance of the public peace, to disperse; and it shall thereupon be the duty of the members of such assembly to disperse accordingly.

In this very consciously worded provision of the ironically named Bharatiya Nagari Suraksha Sanhita, the brakes on arbitrary decision making are what the law starts with when it says “Any Executive Magistrate” a rank that can be seen as higher than a sub-inspector and its equal rank “an officer in-charge of a police station.” These brakes are immediately loosened as soon as the provision says “in the absence of such officer in-charge, any officer not below the rank of sub-inspector” which is essentially ‘any sub-inspector may command an unlawful assembly to disperse’. Section 148(2) states that if the unlawful assembly does not break or disperse, force may be used.

This vacuum of doctrine is filled, on the ground, by the officer’s own instincts, which are shaped by his training, and his training has taught him that a crowd is a mob and a mob is dispersed. The verbs matter. Everything downstream of that verb, the choice of equipment, the posture of the constable, the tone of the first announcement over the loudhailer, flows from an idea that treats the citizen as the problem.

Reform, then, has to begin with rewriting the verb, and only afterward can it move to the machinery. A new statutory framework, whether through fresh state Police Acts or a national code drafted with genuine input from civil liberties lawyers, protest organisers, retired officers, and public health experts, would need to establish something Indian policing has never really had i.e., an affirmative duty on the police to facilitate the exercise of Article 19 rights, with the burden of proving imminent danger sitting on the state rather than on the citizen. This is a bigger conceptual shift than I am making it out to be. It converts a protest from a privilege the police grant to a right the police protect, and it changes what a good day at work looks like for the officer on the ground. Under the current architecture, a successfully dispersed protest is a professional success. However, if facilitation becomes the way, a protest that ended peacefully with people going home hoarse and tired is the professional success, and the constable who talked a knot of angry young men out of throwing stones is the officer who is promoted.

It is here that international experience begins to matter, but it matters with far more nuance than mere adoption of any other country’s practices.

Is there a better way to handle crowds?

Swedish dialogue policing, developed after the Gothenburg riots of 2001, is genuinely interesting. A uniformed dialogue officers whose only job is to talk, weeks of pre-protest negotiation with organisers, jointly walked routes, agreed visible signals for escalation. But Sweden is a country of ten million people with a small, homogeneous police service, protests that usually have identifiable organisers, and a political culture that treats the state as broadly trustworthy. Almost none of that describes India. An Indian protest often has no single leadership to negotiate with. And that itself has many legitimate reasons. Shaheen Bagh’s power came precisely from being leaderless, and the farmers’ protest at Delhi’s borders had a rotating cast of union heads who did not always agree. A dialogue officer culture cannot be imported wholesale into a force where the sub-inspector’s authority over the constable rests substantially on his willingness to be feared, or into a political environment where the ruling party may actively want the protest broken. What can be borrowed is the underlying idea that communication is a professional skill and that the officer who de-escalates is doing the harder, more valuable job. The Indian adaptation would have to invent new institutional forms. Perhaps designated Protest Liaison Cells at the district level, staffed by officers who volunteer for this work and are trained in the sociology of Indian protests specifically, the role of caste and community in shaping crowd dynamics, the way rumours travel through WhatsApp during a sit-in, the different psychology of a farmer’s rally and a student’s march.

How do we ensure Accountability and Transparency?

Training has to move in parallel with theories and ideas, because an institution behaves the way it has been trained to behave. The average Indian constable receives around nine months of basic training, of which crowd control occupies perhaps a handful of days delivered largely as physical drill: forming a cordon, swinging a lathi, executing a charge. What is ironic is that the Delhi Police had sent its force to train on crowd control to the Rapid Action Force’s academy in Meerut.  Therefore, a serious redesign would build in weeks rather than days on crowd psychology, non-violent communication, and scenario simulation, and it would bring in outside trainers whom the police service currently views with suspicion i.e., lawyers, doctors, protest organisers themselves, journalists who have been on the receiving end of a lathi charge. This means that not only is there a need to impart more democratic training to the police officers, there is also a need to first have them unlearn the anti-democratic training they undergo within the current system. Empathy is a trainable skill, and India has trained it out of the force with unusual efficiency.

Equipment is the piece where brakes are needed the most, and it is where the current system does its most visible damage. The tear gas shells commonly used in Indian crowd control operations are frequently past expiry, often fired directly at protesters rather than in high arcs, and their canisters have killed by head impact alone. The pattern is documented from Tuticorin in 2018 through Delhi in 2020 and beyond. Pellet guns, deployed extensively in Kashmir, have blinded thousands, including children, and belong to a category of weapon that no civilian police service anywhere in the democratic world uses at that scale. Reform here is partly a matter of procurement rules, independent medical review of every less-lethal munition, withdrawal of anything with a documented pattern of causing serious injury, and partly a matter of what the equipment signals. When a police unit arrives at a peaceful sit-in in full riot gear with automatic weapons visible, it has communicated something before a word is spoken, and the communication is that this is not a conversation.

Body cameras are worth thinking about carefully, because they have become the fashionable answer everywhere and their record is genuinely mixed. American police departments adopted them at scale after Ferguson in 2014, and the studies since have shown that they reduce complaints and reduce force only when the surrounding accountability system actually processes the footage. Otherwise, they simply become one more piece of evidence that the police control. An Indian body camera regime would work only if the footage was held by an authority outside the police, if turning the camera off during an incident created a legal presumption against the officer, and if selective deletion carried personal consequences. Without those scaffolds, a body camera is theatre.

Section 197 of the CrPC, now carried into the BNSS, requires government sanction to prosecute a public servant for acts committed in the course of duty, and that sanction is almost never granted for crowd-control violence. The Hashimpura convictions came thirty-one years after the killings, and only because the High Court refused to let the case die. The blinding, firings, and custodial deaths that fill the decades between then and now have produced almost no criminal consequences for the officers involved. Reform requires narrowing the sanction requirement sharply for offences involving death, grievous hurt, or sexual violence during crowd operations; creating a statutory presumption of state liability with immediate compensation from a dedicated fund; and, most importantly, building Police Complaints Authorities with the staff, the budget, and the independence to actually investigate. None of this needs a foreign model to justify it. It is a purely Indian problem with a purely Indian solution i.e., the state must be willing to let its own officers be held to account, and until it is, every other reform is decoration. And the deployment of paramilitary forces like the CRPF for what is essentially civil policing has to be scaled back, because their training is for insurgency, not for citizens.

Be that as it may, some protests turn violent and they will need force to restore peace. When such protests do happen, it is natural for the police to need split-second decision-making powers. It is here that a transparent system should be put in place that protects both the citizens against undue force and also ensures that the police are able to restore peace. What could those systems be?

A detailed, publicly accessible post incident report, with statements taken from the personnel as soon as their shift ends, by an independent protest cell would be desirable. This cell could consist of independently appointed panel of citizens, by the people’s representatives at the local level i.e., the Sarpanches, Corporators, Mandal Parishad and Zilla Parishad Members via detailed reasoning for each selection.

For added protection, each cell should be mandatorily adopt a consensus approach while making decisions. This could ensure that accountability is introduced. It is here again that Bodycams could be of assistance to show whether disproportionate force is being used or not. The police should be able to show to the protest cell all their attempts to assuage the crowd or calm it before they resorted to force. Individual complaints against any officer using disproportionate force need to be taken. For example, there have been many instances in the recent Delhi protests against NEET, where videos were shot when the police used batons to thrash protesters as they were walking without any disturbance. Such excessive and unnecessary use of force needs to be held accountable for any meaningful reform.

Conclusion

Reform of this depth is slow, and its friends inside the system are few. But the alternative is what India has now i.e., a police service whose default response to democratic expression is force, and a citizenry that has learned to expect the lathi as the state’s first sentence in any conversation about grievance. That expectation, more than any single incident, is what corrodes the trust on which a democracy runs. A protest, at its heart, is a citizen still willing to talk to the state. The reform of Indian policing, in the end, is the question of whether the state is willing to talk back.

(The author is part of the legal research team of the organisation)

Related:

Permission to Protest? Why the right to dissent needs no licence

Defectors & Democracy: A critique of the Tenth Schedule of the Indian Constitution

July 2026: A dissent that was brutally put down, a crackdown after the protest ended

The post Reforming policing beyond force appeared first on SabrangIndia.

That contradiction lies at the heart of what comes next. The resignation may have answered one political demand, but it does not answer what happened to the protesters who were arrested. It does not account for the FIRs filed against them. It does not explain why cases were registered despite the Centre’s assurance that there would be none. And it does not settle the allegations of excessive police force, including the reported use of pellet guns, or the injuries sustained during the crackdown. Nor does it address what happened after the crowds dispersed.

The protests of India’s youth, especially in Delhi, the capital and Bihar were especially brutal. The use of pellet guns, steel lathis and visuals and videos of brazen sexual assault by policing personnel against female protesters are now a household story and have generated outrage and demands for accountability and action.

Though the protests have ended, for now, police cases have not been withdrawn. Notices were issued. Families were drawn into the process. Protesters were detained and, in some cases, sent to judicial custody. Facial-recognition technology was deployed around protest sites. Muslim protesters and volunteers reported police action that, in some instances, allegedly extended to their families. Across different states, the response to dissent increasingly moved beyond the street and into the criminal justice system, the home and the private lives of those who had participated.

This is why the aftermath cannot be reduced to the resignation of a minister or the withdrawal of a protest. The more difficult questions remain. What happens to the FIRs filed against protesters after the Centre’s assurance that there would be none? Why are police reportedly waiting for government approval to withdraw cases that should, according to that assurance, never have been registered? Who will account for the arrests and detentions that have already taken place? Who will investigate allegations of police brutality and excessive force? And what happens to those who were injured, who were under surveillance or drawn into cases simply for being part of a movement that challenged the government? The political confrontation may have ended. The State’s actions during and after it still demand answers.

The Centre’s assurance and the FIRs that followed

Among the final demands put forward by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) before it called off the agitation was the withdrawal of all FIRs and cases registered against protesters during the movement. The demand was significant because it recognised that, beyond the immediate political questions of examination reforms and ministerial accountability, hundreds of students and young protesters had already been drawn into the criminal justice system. Following assurances from the Centre that protest-related cases would not continue and that FIRs against protesters would be withdrawn, the CJP announced the suspension of its agitation.

To date however, there is no confirmation that these assurances have resulted in real action.

Yet the events on the ground tell a more complicated story. Reports from across the country show that FIRs had already been registered, protesters had been arrested, and many had been remanded to judicial custody before the political settlement was reached. According to reporting cited by Maktoob Media, more than 400 protesters were arrested and sent to jail, while police released photographs and posters of identified protesters in several districts. The report noted that these arrests came despite the Union government’s assurance that no cases related to the protests would be registered in NDA-ruled states. In Patna, at least 87 people were reportedly remanded in an FIR connected to the Bihar Bandh, while Prabhat Khabar, as cited in the same compilation, reported that 190 people had been arrested and sent to jail. In Chhapra, four FIRs were reportedly registered and 56 people arrested, while 25 people were arrested in Siwan.

The Centre’s assurance and the events on the ground therefore sit uneasily alongside each other. If peaceful participation in the protests was never meant to attract criminal proceedings, why were FIRs registered against protesters at all? And if, as reported by The Times of India, the Delhi Police are now awaiting government approval to withdraw these cases, it raises another question: why should people who were peacefully exercising their constitutional rights have had to pass through the criminal justice system in the first place?

As per Indian Express, Mumbai Police registered 15 FIRs against nearly 1,500 people in connection with demonstrations supporting the agitation. Police data accessed by the newspaper showed that among 301 people named in seven FIRs, more than half were aged 25 or younger, with one in five between 18 and 20. Around one-third of those named were women. The offences included unlawful assembly and disobedience of lawful orders. The Indian Express also reported the case of a 20-year-old student who said he had been recording a protest from a sweet shop after attending his coaching class. He was taken to a police station and later struggled to determine whether an FIR had actually been registered against him. The uncertainty surrounding his legal status became a form of pressure in itself.

This does not diminish the importance of withdrawing the FIRs. On the contrary, their withdrawal is necessary where protesters have been booked solely for participating in peaceful demonstrations. But the withdrawal of cases cannot be the end of the conversation. It must also be accompanied by an examination of how and why peaceful protesters were criminalised despite the Centre’s assurance and despite the constitutional guarantee of the right to assemble and protest peacefully.

This distinction is important. Where individuals committed acts of violence, attacked police personnel or damaged public property, those allegations must be investigated on their own merits. But participation in a peaceful protest is not, by itself, a crime. The criminal law must distinguish between acts of violence and the exercise of democratic rights. That distinction is essential if the constitutional right to protest is to have any real meaning. This is the point at which the FIR becomes more than a legal instrument. It becomes a mechanism through which the State can impose a cost on dissent even without securing a conviction. The consequences begin before the court has spoken.

From tear gas and barricades to alleged pellet injuries in Delhi

The use of force in Delhi adds another dimension to the story. The march towards Parliament on July 20 became a defining moment in the State’s response to the movement, with police action involving barricading and crowd-control measures, including tear gas, followed by allegations that pellet guns were used.

The Hindu reported that at least four of approximately 80 protesters injured during the police action sustained pellet-gun injuries, according to a source at Lady Hardinge Medical College. Delhi Police denied using pellet guns and called the claims false and misleading, while allegations focused on the Rapid Action Force. The RAF, reported The Print, has accepted using excessive force.

The Hindu’s analysis notes that the Ministry of Home Affairs has maintained that pellet guns should be used only as a last resort after other crowd-control measures, including warnings, tear-smoke and PAVA shells, have failed to disperse a violent crowd. The July 20 incident therefore raises the question of whether the safeguards governing their use were followed. That question becomes particularly important when the protesters are students and when there is no established finding that the crowd posed a threat requiring such a weapon.

The debate over pellet guns is not new. The Hindu’s reporting recalls how the government explored alternatives following the injuries caused during the unrest in Kashmir, including PAVA shells, stun-lac rounds, acoustic devices and plastic bullets. Yet pellet guns remained part of the security forces’ arsenal. The weapon’s continued use has been criticised because of its capacity to cause permanent eye injuries and other serious harm.

The United Nations Human Rights Office’s 2020 guidance on less-lethal weapons went further, stating that metal pellets fired from shotguns should never be used because multi-projectile weapons are inherently inaccurate and generally cannot meet the principles of necessity and proportionality.

The Delhi episode therefore requires a transparent investigation into what happened, which forces were deployed, what weapons were used, who authorised their use and whether the response was proportionate to the threat. The same principle that applies to protesters must apply to the State: evidence must determine responsibility.

The State’s response did not stop at the barricades

The crackdown also moved into the realm of surveillance. The Daily Pioneer reported that Delhi Police deployed four facial-recognition units around the Jantar Mantar protest site. Police said the systems were intended to identify wanted criminals, absconders and history-sheeters rather than ordinary protesters, and that the cameras were connected to the Delhi Police database.

The police explanation is relevant, but it does not resolve the broader civil-liberties question. When facial-recognition systems are deployed around a political demonstration, citizens may reasonably wonder whether participation itself is being recorded and monitored. The difference between surveillance intended to identify wanted criminals and surveillance that chills ordinary political participation must be clearly maintained. Without adequate safeguards, a protest site can become a space where citizens exercise their democratic rights while simultaneously being subjected to technologies of identification.

The effect may be subtle, but it can be powerful. A young person who knows that their face may be scanned may think twice before attending a demonstration. A student who has already seen fellow protesters arrested may decide not to return. A citizen who fears being identified may choose silence over participation. The State does not need to prohibit protest outright to weaken the right to protest. It only needs to make participation feel dangerous.

According to The Times of India, Delhi Police have initiated action against social media posts that allegedly contained abusive or derogatory language directed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the CJP-led agitation. Several social media platforms have reportedly received notices seeking the removal of such content, with most of the flagged videos, posts and comments already taken down. The report further states that police teams are continuing to monitor online content, issuing fresh notices as new posts emerge and directing platforms to remove them promptly.

The police have maintained that the action is limited to content containing abusive language and is aimed at enforcing the law. At the same time, the move illustrates how the State’s response to the protests has expanded beyond physical demonstrations into the digital spaces where political mobilisation, criticism and debate increasingly take place. While speech that falls foul of the law may legitimately invite legal scrutiny, sustained monitoring of online expression linked to a protest also raises broader questions about the extent to which digital speech surrounding political dissent is being policed in the aftermath of the agitation.

Viewed alongside the registration of FIRs, arrests, surveillance measures and police action during the protests, the scrutiny of online content suggests that the State’s response has not been confined to restoring public order at protest sites. It has continued into the spaces where the protest is remembered, discussed and documented.

The Muslim protester and the question of unequal policing

The allegations involving Muslim protesters and volunteers add another layer of concern to the story. It is important to be precise here: the available reporting does not establish a universal policy of targeting Muslims, and individual allegations must be independently verified. But the number and nature of the reported incidents are serious enough to raise questions about whether Muslim citizens have been disproportionately exposed to police scrutiny and coercion.

One of the most striking cases concerns Muhammad Junaid, a volunteer who was reportedly involved in distributing food and water to protesters. According to reporting cited from Scroll, Junaid alleged that police action extended to his family while authorities were looking for him. His relatives were reportedly detained or questioned, and documents were allegedly seized, while police denied taking action against his family. The allegation is significant not simply because it concerns one individual. It raises the possibility that the pressure of policing can extend beyond the person who participated in a protest and reach those around them.

The reported targeting of families is especially troubling because it changes the nature of State pressure. When a person is arrested for an alleged offence, the State is at least claiming to act against that individual. When police action allegedly reaches parents, siblings, spouses or in-laws, the message becomes broader. It suggests that the consequences of dissent may not be confined to the person who chose to protest.

A similar concern emerged in reports concerning five Muslim students returning from Jantar Mantar towards Jamia Millia Islamia. According to The Siasat Daily, the students were taken to a police station and later released after activists and a reporter questioned the police action. The students alleged that they had been picked up without explanation and threatened with a case when they questioned the detention, while the police position was reportedly that the action amounted to verification. Again, these incidents require independent scrutiny rather than sweeping conclusions.

But the pattern is difficult to ignore when placed alongside the case of three young Muslim men in Assam. The Wire reported that Monjur Rahman, Ashraful Islam and Abdul Kashem were arrested after allegedly attempting to organise a peaceful protest in solidarity with the wider movement. Their families said they had sought permission for the demonstration and that the proposed protest had not even taken place. The men were nevertheless booked under serious provisions, including Section 152 of the BNS, while their families disputed the allegations. The central question is not whether every action against a Muslim protester is necessarily communal. The more fundamental question is whether the State is applying the same standards of suspicion, surveillance and force to citizens regardless of their religious identity. That is the test of equal citizenship; and it is a test that must be answered through evidence, transparency and accountability.

Moreover, in Assam, advocate Ariful Islam was remanded to judicial custody until August 7 after being detained by the police for more than 24 hours. According to lawyer and Congress spokesperson Aman Wadud, who represented him in court, Islam was not participating in the protest but was near the site in his advocate’s uniform, carrying his Bar Council identity card and copies of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS). As reported by Maktoob Media, Wadud alleged that despite identifying himself as a practising lawyer, Islam was booked under Section 152 of the BNS and remanded to judicial custody. Wadud also pointed to the contradiction between the arrest and the Union government’s assurance that cases against peaceful protesters would be withdrawn, describing the police action as arbitrary and unconstitutional.

West Bengal and the Invocation of the Goonda Act

The legal response to the protests also escalated beyond the filing of FIRs. In West Bengal, the State government invoked the West Bengal Public Safety and Control of Anti-Social Activities Act, 2026, commonly known as the Goonda Act, for the first time since its enactment in connection with violence during the Kolkata protest march.

Announcing the decision in the Assembly, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said around 70 people identified from the protest had “nothing to do with the student movement” and alleged that they had participated solely to create disorder. Seven FIRs were registered in connection with the violence, and police arrested 11 people, including 10 Muslims. The Chief Minister also condemned the reported attacks on journalists during the demonstration, stating that the law had been invoked to ensure “exemplary punishment” for those responsible.

The invocation of the legislation is significant because of the extraordinary powers it confers on the State. The Act allows authorities to order preventive detention for up to one year without trial, issue externment orders requiring individuals to leave specified districts and attach property allegedly connected to unlawful activities. Its constitutional validity is currently under challenge before the Calcutta High Court, with Opposition parties and civil rights groups arguing that its broad preventive detention provisions are susceptible to political misuse and could be used to suppress dissent.

The government has defended its decision by maintaining that the law is being applied not against peaceful protesters but against individuals accused of orchestrating violence and attacking police personnel and journalists. According to the State, shoes, bottles and other objects were thrown at security personnel and members of the media, while the police exercised restraint despite alleged attempts to provoke a stronger response.

Student organisers, however, dispute that account. The Students’ Federation of India (SFI) condemned the attacks on journalists but alleged that “agent provocateurs” linked to the BJP had infiltrated the demonstration to derail the protest and discredit the movement. As reported by Maktoob Media, SFI leaders also accused the Kolkata Police of using tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators and alleged that several student protesters sustained injuries. They further called for an independent investigation, claiming that video footage showed individuals allegedly associated with the BJP participating in the violence.

The competing narratives surrounding the Kolkata violence underscore the importance of an impartial investigation. Those responsible for attacking journalists, police personnel or damaging public property must be identified and prosecuted on the basis of evidence. At the same time, the decision to invoke a preventive detention law with sweeping powers in the context of a political protest inevitably raises wider questions about proportionality, necessity and the extent to which extraordinary legislation should be used in situations involving public demonstrations.

The arrests also drew further scrutiny because 10 of the 11 people arrested were Muslims. Responding to these reports, CJP spokesperson Ratna Singh said the party had received information that protesters had been detained by police in both Assam and West Bengal and that many of those detained were allegedly Muslims. She stated that if those reports were accurate, any targeting of individuals on the basis of religion would be unlawful and deeply concerning. While these allegations remain contested, they add to broader concerns raised elsewhere during the protests regarding whether policing and criminal proceedings were being applied uniformly across communities.

Bihar and the problem of the government’s promise

Bihar presents perhaps the clearest example of why the Centre’s assurance requires greater scrutiny. The State witnessed serious incidents during the Bihar Bandh, including allegations of stone-pelting and damage to public property, and those incidents must be investigated. The legitimacy of a protest does not provide immunity to anyone who commits violence. At the same time, the State’s response must remain proportionate and individualised.

The Hindu reported that police opened fire using AK-47 in Siwan after protesters allegedly continued throwing stones, with at least three protesters injured and police officers also reportedly hurt. The said police officer was later suspended. Scroll separately reported that police opened fire in Jehanabad after protesters allegedly damaged the gate of the district magistrate’s residence and threw stones, while more than 100 people were reportedly arrested. These incidents demonstrate why accountability cannot be one-sided. Those who attacked police officers or damaged property must be investigated, but allegations of excessive police force must also be independently examined. The same principle applies to the FIRs.

The political language around protest is changing

The legal and physical response to dissent has also been accompanied by increasingly charged political language. The Hindu reported that BJP state president Shamik Bhattacharya described protesters involved in a West Bengal rally as “anti-nationals” amid allegations of violence, while an FIR was also registered against actor Sreelekha Mitra over an allegedly objectionable poster depicting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The reporting also documented competing allegations about violence and attacks on journalists during the protest.

There is no question that violence, vandalism and attacks on journalists must be investigated. Political speech does not provide immunity from criminal law. But the use of labels such as “anti-national” has consequences beyond rhetoric. It can transform the public understanding of dissent from a democratic right into a security threat. Once protesters are framed as threats rather than citizens, stronger State intervention becomes easier to justify. That is why political language matters. The difference between calling someone a protester and calling them an anti-national is not merely semantic. One recognises a citizen exercising a political right. The other places that citizen outside the boundaries of legitimate dissent.

The protest has ended; the questions have not

The resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan may have brought the immediate political confrontation to a close, but it has not resolved the questions raised by the State’s response to the protests. Those questions extend far beyond whether the FIRs against protesters will eventually be withdrawn. They concern the use of force against demonstrators, including allegations of excessive police action and the reported use of pellet guns. They concern the registration of FIRs despite assurances that protest-related cases would not continue, the arrests and judicial custody that followed, and reports that police are now awaiting government approval before withdrawing those cases. They concern the deployment of facial-recognition technology and the monitoring of online speech long after protesters had left the streets. They concern the invocation of extraordinary laws such as West Bengal’s Goonda Act, allegations that Muslim protesters and volunteers were disproportionately targeted, and the political language that increasingly sought to portray demonstrators as “anti-nationals”, “outsiders” or agents of disorder rather than citizens exercising a democratic right.

None of these developments can be viewed in isolation. Taken together, they reveal a broader pattern in which the State’s response to dissent extended well beyond maintaining public order. The protest moved from the streets into police stations, courtrooms, surveillance systems and social media platforms. What began as a movement demanding accountability for failures in the education system became, in many instances, a test of how far the State would go in policing dissent and political opposition.

This does not mean that acts of violence, attacks on journalists or damage to public property should go unpunished. Those responsible must be identified and prosecuted on the basis of evidence. But the same standard of accountability must apply to the State. Allegations of excessive force must be independently investigated. The circumstances surrounding injuries sustained during police action must be examined. The use of facial-recognition technology and expanded digital surveillance at protest sites requires greater transparency. The decision to register FIRs despite public assurances demands an explanation. And allegations of selective targeting, including those involving Muslim protesters and their families, cannot simply be dismissed without an impartial inquiry.

The end of a protest cannot mark the end of accountability. Withdrawing FIRs, if that is ultimately done, would provide relief to many protesters, but it would not answer the larger questions raised by the State’s conduct during and after the movement. A democracy is measured not only by its willingness to hear dissent but also by the limits it places on its own exercise of power. Those limits are precisely what the protests have placed under scrutiny, and they remain unresolved long after the streets have emptied.

Other detailed reports may be read here, here, here and here.

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The post July 2026: A dissent that was brutally put down, a crackdown after the protest ended appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Colonial hangover and Constitutional Rights

Article 19 (1) (b) of the Constitution guarantees to every citizen the right “to assemble peaceably and without arms.” The clause reads as a right, not as a licence. It was drafted by people, Ambedkar, Patel, Munshi, Ayyar, who had themselves been the objects of a Raj-era regime that criminalised assembly. The very provisions still used to disperse and pre-empt protests today, Section 144 of the erstwhile Code of Criminal Procedure (now Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita), the police licensing powers under the various state Police Acts are in their bones, colonial. Section 144 traces back to 1861, drafted in the wake of 1857 by a colonial administration whose interest in “public order” was frankly the order of a foreign occupation. These provisions survived the constitutional transition without the searching examination they deserved, and they now sit comfortably under a rights charter they were never meant to serve.

The Constitution does permit “reasonable restrictions” on the right to assemble under Article 19(3), in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India or public order. But a “restriction” is not the same as a “permission requirement”. A restriction operates on conduct: it says you may not throw stones, you may not carry arms, you may not incite violence. A permission requirement operates on the right itself: it says you may not exercise the right at all unless an official first agrees that you may. The Supreme Court has repeatedly said, most memorably in S. Rangarajan v. P. Jagjivan Ram (1989), that any restriction on Article 19 rights must have a “proximate and direct nexus” with the mischief sought to be prevented — it cannot be a “remote, conjectural or far-fetched” apprehension. Permission regimes fail this test by design: they treat every citizen who wishes to assemble as a presumptive threat, requiring them to disprove a danger that has not yet materialised.

The Two Justifications, and Why Both Collapse

The defenders of permission regimes offer, essentially, two justifications. The first is the protection of the rights of others, the commuter’s right to move, the shopkeeper’s right to trade, the resident’s right to quiet. The second is the maintenance of law and order i.e., the fear that assemblies will turn violent, that competing groups will clash, that the police force will be overwhelmed. Both, on inspection, dissolve into arguments not for permission but against protest itself.

Rights vs. Rights

Consider the first. The claim that protests must not disturb the rights of others rests on a strange picture of what protest is for. A protest that inconveniences no one, that is safely tucked into a fenced enclosure at Jantar Mantar or a designated “protest ground” three kilometres from any centre of power, is not a protest in any meaningful sense. It is theatre performed to an empty house. The whole point of assembly, historically and philosophically, is to make a claim visible by making it felt. The villagers whose lands are being acquired for a highway that serves urban commuters cannot articulate their grievance more powerfully than by sitting on that very highway for a day. The disruption is not incidental to their message; it is their message. It says that the road that will be built at the cost of our fields is not, at this moment, more important than our objection. It forces the commuter, who would otherwise pass through obliviously, to briefly inhabit the same inconvenience the villager is being asked to inhabit permanently.

This is what Judith Butler calls the “performative” dimension of assembly: bodies gathered in public space are themselves a form of political speech, prior to and independent of any slogan they might shout. Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition, argued that the political is precisely what appears in public space[1]; to deny appearance is to deny the political. And the Indian tradition, from Gandhi’s satyagraha onwards, has never pretended that legitimate protest is unobtrusive. The Salt March was illegal. The Champaran movement violated orders. If we take seriously the idea that Article 19(1)(b) protects a right of political appearance, then some measure of disruption to others is not a defect of the right. It is constitutive of it. Rights, as Ronald Dworkin put it, are trumps against ordinary utilitarian calculations; the fact that a protest inconveniences many does not, without more, defeat the right of the few to hold it.

None of this collapses into a licence for anything. A protest that blocks an ambulance, that occupies a road indefinitely for months, that targets private homes to intimidate, these can be regulated by ordinary law. What cannot be sustained is the conversion of the possibility of such conduct into a prior permission regime that treats every citizen as a suspect.

Law and order

The second justification is maintenance of law and order. The claim is that assemblies produce violence, and that permission regimes let police pre-position resources, prevent clashes between rival groups, and generally keep the peace. But we need to see what the argument actually asks the police to do. It does not ask them to act against violence when it occurs; it asks them to decide, in advance, which ideas and which groups are dangerous enough to be denied assembly. This is not policing conduct; this is policing politics. The right against prior restraint, which the Supreme Court has recognised in the context of speech at least since Brij Bhushan v. State of Delhi (1950), applies with equal force here. The state may punish what has gone wrong; it may not pre-emptively silence what has not yet happened.

If violence is genuinely apprehended, the police already have every tool they need. They can be present. They can intervene. They can arrest. The Supreme Court in IN Re Ramlila Maidan Incident v. Home Secretary (2012), examining the midnight crackdown on Baba Ramdev’s sleeping supporters, held emphatically that even where a gathering has become legally impermissible, the state’s response must be proportionate and cannot substitute brute force for lawful procedure. The Court’s reasoning cut both ways: as the state cannot use disproportionate force to disperse, it cannot use disproportionate suspicion to pre-empt.

The “Overwhelmed Police” Objection

The most sophisticated version of the law-and-order argument is the resource one i.e., what if bad-faith actors mobilise many small protests at once precisely to stretch the police thin, creating openings for genuine disorder elsewhere? The objection deserves a serious answer, and there are at least four.

First, this is a factual worry that assumes a policing infrastructure of the 1970s. The contemporary Indian state has surveillance capacities, CCTV networks, social media monitoring, drone reconnaissance, cell phone tower triangulation, that make coordinated deceptive mobilisation far harder to pull off than the objection assumes. If anything, the state’s problem today is an excess of pre-emptive information, not a deficit.

Second, this risk already exists under the permission regime. Permissions are routinely violated, spontaneous gatherings routinely occur, and the police already deal with more assemblies than they have formally licensed. The permission requirement does not solve the “stretched thin” problem; it merely gives the state an additional charge to file against organisers after the fact. The regime is redundant to the risk it claims to address.

Third, if a society genuinely has the political conditions for the kind of mass simultaneous mobilisation the objection imagines enough anger, enough distrust of the police, enough coordination against the state, then the answer is not more suppression. Suppression is what produces such conditions in the first place. Every serious student of political violence, from has documented that closed political systems, where legitimate outlets for grievance are shut down, are the ones that eventually explode. The permission regime is a pressure cooker with no whistle. Detangling protest from permission is not a concession to disorder; it is one of the surest ways to prevent the disorder that comes from bottled dissent.

Fourth, and most fundamentally, laws should not be framed around their most extreme abuses. The law of contract is not written for the fraudster, though fraudsters exist; the law of property is not written for the thief. To write the law of assembly around the imagined tactician who orchestrates diversionary protests is to write it for a caricature, and then to impose that caricature’s costs on every ordinary citizen who wishes to hold a candlelight vigil. Law-making is not a war between extremes; it is a negotiation between the ever-armed police and the sometimes-angry protester, and it must give the ordinary citizen the benefit of a presumption of good faith.

What the Indian Courts have actually said

Indian constitutional jurisprudence is more sympathetic to this argument than the daily practice of policing suggests. In Himat Lal K. Shah v. Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad (1973), a Constitution Bench struck down a police rule that required prior permission for public meetings on public streets, holding that while the state may regulate the manner of assembly, it cannot vest an official with uncanalised discretion to refuse it altogether. In Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan v. Union of India (2018), the Court reaffirmed the right to peaceful protest as fundamental and directed the police to formulate guidelines that did not effectively extinguish it. Even Amit Sahni v. Commissioner of Police (2020), the Shaheen Bagh judgment, which held that public roads cannot be occupied “indefinitely”, was careful to note that the right to protest is constitutionally protected and that the state’s response must respect it, the Court’s concern was with duration and specific location, not with the existence of the assembly.

This is not to say that the Supreme Court or Judiciary shares the philosophy of this article in its entirety. In all the three judgements mentioned above, the court’s stance was that the police could regulate protests but not arbitrarily and such regulation included permission regime. It needs emphasis here that discussions on state’s power to curb freedoms and the right of citizens cannot be expected to have outright support from institutions of state like the judiciary.

What is important here therefore is the through-line in these judgments i.e., a recognition that Article 19 (1) (b) is a right, not a licence to be dispensed. Yet the ground-level practice i.e., station house officers refusing permissions on vague “law and order” grounds, proceeds as though the right did not exist. There is a wide gulf between the constitutional as lived at a police thana (local police station), and the gulf is filled by permission.

Detangling: A Constitutional Proposal

Detangling protest from permission does not mean abolishing all regulation. It means inverting the default setting as we see today. The right to assemble should be presumed; the state’s role should be to facilitate it and to intervene against specific unlawful conduct when and only when it occurs. Notification, telling the police in advance that an assembly is planned, so they may be present, is compatible with a rights regime. Permission, the police deciding whether the assembly may occur at all, is not.

This is not a radical proposition. It is what Article 19 (1) (b) already says, if we take its language seriously. The word “peaceably” in the clause is a description of the protected assembly; it is not a condition precedent that some official must certify. A peaceable assembly is protected because it is peaceable; if it ceases to be so, the ordinary criminal law applies. There is no constitutional space, between these two propositions, for a permission regime that treats peaceable citizens as presumptively dangerous.

Ambedkar warned, in his final speech to the Constituent Assembly, against the “grammar of anarchy” i.e., the use of unconstitutional methods when constitutional ones are open. It is worth completing his thought. Constitutional methods only remain open if they remain actually available. A right to protest that can be exercised only with the state’s permission, only in the state’s chosen enclosure, only for the state’s chosen duration, is not a constitutional method. It is a courtesy. Ambedkar’s grammar of anarchy takes hold precisely when the grammar of the Constitution has been quietly replaced by the grammar of the licence. Detangling protest from permission is not a departure from Ambedkar’s warning but actually a condition of its fulfilment.

(The author is part of the legal research team of the organisation)

[1] Hanna Arendt, The Public and Private Realm, The Human Condition, Page 59, University of Chicago Press (1998)

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The post Permission to Protest? Why the right to dissent needs no licence appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The order is significant not merely because Parvez and Mehraj have been allowed to remain out on bail, but because it exposes a deeper fault line in India’s anti-terror prosecution regime. Both men have been in custody since March 2023, yet, more than three years later, charges have still not been framed in the case.

The High Court has now held that the trial court’s reasoning for granting bail was legally incomplete because it did not undertake the prima facie assessment mandated by Section 43D(5). The Bench also noted that the prosecution’s chargesheet contains documentary material that the trial court ought to have considered.

“Thus, the trial court’s reasoning is two-pronged i.e.,

• that the evidence is based on oral testimony and
• further that the trial is likely to be delayed further, as charges are yet to be framed in the matter.

However, a perusal of the chargesheet would show that there is in fact documentary evidence which is relied upon by the NIA. Therefore, there ought to have been a discussion in this regard in the impugned orders. The ld. Trial Court is not a Constitutional Court and ought to, in the prima facie opinion of this Court, strictly have gone by the mandate of the statute.” (Para 21)

“Under these circumstances, at the stage of granting bail, this Court would have to consider the mandate of Section 43D(5) of the UAPA and reach a prima facie finding on the allegations raised by the NIA. However, since the impugned orders are orders where bail has been granted by the ld. Trial Court and various conditions have been imposed, this Court is not inclined to stay the operation of the impugned orders.” (Para 22)

At the same time, the High Court declined to put the bail orders on hold and instead imposed a fresh set of restrictions, including twice-weekly reporting to the NIA, a prohibition on participation in programmes and meetings concerning issues similar to those involved in the case, restrictions on communication with persons named in the chargesheet, and a bar on association with organisations linked to the subject matter of the prosecution.

The result is a striking judicial compromise: the High Court has criticised the legal reasoning behind the grant of bail, but has nevertheless refused to undo the liberty that the bail order has restored.

That distinction matters because the central question raised by the case is not simply whether Parvez and Mehraj should remain on bail. It is whether the extraordinary difficulty of obtaining bail under the UAPA, combined with the slow pace of trials, can effectively turn pre-trial detention into punishment before conviction.

The arrest-to-trial gap is the real story

The case against Parvez and Mehraj stems from FIR No. RC-37/2020/NIA/DLI, registered by the National Investigation Agency on October 8, 2020. The two were subsequently chargesheeted as Accused Nos. 1 and 2 in September 2023, with the prosecution invoking provisions of the IPC as well as several provisions of the UAPA, including Sections 17, 18, 22A, 22C, 38, 39 and 40.

What makes the timeline particularly striking is that the High Court’s order records that Parvez has been in custody since March 22, 2023, while Mehraj has been in custody since March 20, 2023, and yet, when the trial court granted them bail in July 2026, charges had still not been framed.

The trial court itself had recognised the likely delay in the proceedings. In Parvez’s case, it noted that the allegations were primarily based on oral testimony whose veracity would have to be tested during trial, a process that was likely to take considerable time. In Mehraj’s case, the trial court similarly observed that the prosecution’s allegations were substantially based on oral testimony and that the trial was unlikely to conclude in the near future. It also recorded that Mehraj had joined the investigation whenever he had been called before his arrest.

This is where the case moves beyond the narrow question of bail. A criminal prosecution is supposed to culminate in a trial, and a trial is supposed to test the evidence relied upon by the prosecution. A conviction, if warranted, is then supposed to follow only after guilt has been established in accordance with law.

When a person is detained for years under a statute that makes bail exceptionally difficult, while the trial remains stuck before the framing of charges, the constitutional promise of personal liberty begins to look increasingly fragile. The State may insist that the accused are dangerous, and the prosecution may invoke national security, but neither the seriousness of the allegations nor the invocation of national security changes the fundamental legal position that the accused have not been convicted.

The danger is that when the process itself takes years, imprisonment before trial can begin to resemble the punishment that the law reserves for a person only after conviction. That is not an argument against prosecuting serious offences. It is an argument for ensuring that serious prosecutions are brought to trial with seriousness and speed.

The NIA’s Case: Terror financing, secession and alleged militant links

According to the NIA’s chargesheet, Parvez was associated with the Jammu & Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) and allegedly used his position to facilitate activities that the agency characterises as secessionist and linked to banned terrorist organisations. The NIA alleges that Parvez was involved in raising and routing funds and in providing financial support to families of Hizbul Mujahideen cadres. The agency has also alleged links with Hizbul Mujahideen commanders, the Jammu & Kashmir Affectees Relief Trust and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.

The prosecution further alleges that Parvez facilitated the recruitment of local youth into terrorist ranks and maintained contacts with various organisations and individuals associated with the Kashmir separatist movement.

The allegations against Mehraj are similar. The NIA alleges that Mehraj worked as a researcher and volunteer with JKCCS, was closely associated with Parvez, and formed part of what the prosecution describes as a wider conspiracy promoting a secessionist agenda.

The agency further alleges that Mehraj maintained contact with persons linked to Hizbul Mujahideen, assisted in receiving funds and played a role in their alleged distribution. These allegations constitute the prosecution’s case and remain to be established through the judicial process. They are not findings of guilt, and the accused remain entitled to the presumption of innocence until their guilt is proved in accordance with law.

The UAPA’s Paradox: The harder the bail, the longer the incarceration

The case also highlights the particular difficulty created by Section 43D(5) of the UAPA. Under the provision, a court must be satisfied that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accusation against the accused is prima facie not true before bail can ordinarily be granted. This creates an exceptionally high threshold for an accused seeking release.

The accused is not merely required to satisfy the conventional considerations governing bail. The court must also engage with the prosecution’s case at a preliminary stage and determine whether the allegations appear prima facie true. The consequence can be severe because, when bail is denied, the accused remains incarcerated, and when the trial moves slowly, that incarceration can continue for years.

If charges are not framed, the evidence is not fully tested, and if witnesses have not been cross-examined, their credibility remains unresolved. Yet, during that entire period, the accused can continue to remain behind bars. This is the paradox at the heart of the UAPA bail regime.

The stringent statutory threshold is intended to protect the State against serious threats, but when it operates alongside prolonged investigations, voluminous chargesheets and slow-moving trials, it creates the possibility that the denial of bail itself becomes the most consequential punishment imposed on an accused person long before a court determines whether that person is actually guilty.

The case of Parvez and Mehraj brings that concern into sharp relief because both men have spent more than three years in custody while the trial has yet to reach the stage of framing charges.

The High Court order

The High Court’s criticism of the trial court: The NIA challenged the bail orders on the ground that the trial court had failed to comply with the mandatory requirement of Section 43D(5). Senior Advocate Madhav Khurana, appearing for the agency, argued that the trial court had essentially granted bail because the trial was at an early stage and because the prosecution’s case was based largely on oral evidence.

The NIA argued that this approach ignored the statutory test and failed to account for the seriousness of the allegations. The agency also contended that the release of the accused could have consequences for national security. The defence opposed the NIA’s attempt to stay the bail orders.

It argued that the trial court had considered the allegations and had imposed stringent safeguards before granting bail. The defence also contended that a bail order should not ordinarily be interfered with except in exceptional circumstances. The defence further relied upon an earlier Delhi High Court order granting bail to Parvez in another UAPA case, arguing that there was an overlap between the allegations in the two matters and that the NIA had not challenged that earlier order.

The High Court ultimately found that the trial court’s approach did not go far enough. The Bench held that the trial court had failed to arrive at the conclusion required under the proviso to Section 43D(5) regarding the prima facie position of the accusations against the accused. The High Court also identified what it regarded as a significant omission in the trial court’s reasoning.

While the trial court had proceeded on the basis that the allegations were primarily founded on oral testimony, the High Court, after examining the chargesheet, found that the NIA had also relied upon documentary evidence. The Bench held that this documentary material ought to have been discussed in the bail orders.

The Court further observed that a trial court dealing with bail under the UAPA must strictly follow the statutory mandate and undertake the prima facie assessment required under Section 43D(5).

But the High Court draws the line at sending them back to jail: This is perhaps the most important part of the judgment. Despite finding a serious deficiency in the trial court’s application of Section 43D(5), the High Court refused to stay the bail orders.

The Bench noted that the trial court had already granted bail subject to several conditions and declined to suspend the operation of those orders. The High Court also made it clear that it was not expressing any opinion on the merits of the allegations at this stage. Instead of ordering the accused back into custody, the Court imposed additional restrictions.

The accused must now report to the NIA’s Chief Investigating Officer twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday, at the agency’s headquarters in Lodhi Road. They have been restrained from participating in activities similar to those forming the basis of the prosecution case and from associating with groups or organisations linked to the subject matter of the FIR, including JKCCS.

They have also been barred from participating in or attending programmes, rallies, gatherings or meetings concerning issues similar to those involved in the case, whether physically or virtually, until the conclusion of the trial. The restrictions further prohibit the circulation of posts, literature, handbills, posters and banners in any form.

The accused have also been prohibited from communicating with co-accused and persons named in the case materials or allegedly involved in similar activities. They may communicate with close relatives and family members, but cannot meet or communicate with persons or organisations named in the chargesheet. These conditions operate in addition to those already imposed by the trial court.

Parvez was represented by senior advocate Tanvir Ahmed Mir, along with Advocates Swati and Kartik Venu while advocate Jawahar Raja represented Mehraj.

A bail order that comes with an extraordinary degree of restraint

The irony of the order is difficult to overlook. The High Court has restored liberty to the accused, but that liberty comes with an extraordinary degree of surveillance and restriction. Parvez and Mehraj are free from custody, but they must report twice every week to the investigating agency. They are permitted to interact with their families, but their communications with persons named in the chargesheet are restricted. They cannot participate in public programmes, rallies or meetings concerning issues similar to those involved in the case. They cannot circulate literature, posters, banners or other material. They cannot associate with organisations linked to the subject matter of the prosecution.

Such conditions raise a broader question about the meaning of liberty after bail has been granted. If the criminal justice system presumes a person innocent until conviction, the extent to which restrictions can be imposed on a person released on bail before they begin to resemble a form of preventive restraint deserves careful judicial scrutiny. That question becomes particularly important when the trial itself has not yet begun in earnest. The High Court’s order does not answer that question, but it brings the issue sharply into focus.

There is a tendency in national security cases to treat the invocation of the UAPA as though it ends the conversation about individual liberty. It should not. The seriousness of an allegation does not eliminate the requirement of a fair and timely trial. The invocation of terrorism-related offences does not suspend the presumption of innocence.

National security is undoubtedly a compelling state interest, but it cannot become a blanket answer to every question concerning prolonged pre-trial incarceration. The State has every right, and indeed a duty, to investigate credible allegations of terror financing and links with banned organisations. At the same time, the State also has a duty to prosecute those cases efficiently and to ensure that criminal proceedings do not remain in limbo for years.

If the prosecution believes, it possesses a compelling documentary record, financial trail, communications evidence and witness testimony, that material must ultimately be brought before the trial court and tested through the judicial process. The criminal justice system cannot indefinitely rely on the gravity of allegations as a substitute for adjudication. That is the central tension in the Parvez-Mehraj case.

The NIA maintains that the allegations are grave enough to justify continued incarceration. The defence maintains that the accused have already spent years in custody without trial and that the prosecution’s evidence must be tested in court. The High Court has, for now, chosen a middle path by acknowledging the deficiencies in the trial court’s bail reasoning while refusing to reverse the grant of bail.

Trial to continue, while the bail battle remains alive

The High Court has directed the respondents to file their replies to the NIA’s appeals, with rejoinders to follow. The proceedings before the trial court have also been directed to continue. The Bench has specifically clarified that the July 18 bail orders shall not be treated as precedent in any other case because those orders remain under challenge before the High Court. The matter is next listed for August 24, 2026.

For now, Parvez and Mehraj remain on bail, although under a formidable set of restrictions. The larger legal battle, however, is far from over. The case is no longer only about whether two accused persons should remain free pending trial. It has also come to represent a larger question about the operation of India’s stringent anti-terror laws and the constitutional cost of prolonged pre-trial incarceration.

The question is whether a system that makes bail exceptionally difficult can also afford to move slowly when personal liberty is at stake. The answer cannot simply be that the allegations are serious. The answer must ultimately come from a trial.

The complete order may be read below:

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The post Bail Stays, But Under Tight Curbs: Delhi HC’s order in Parvez-Mehraj UAPA case appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Recent decisions of three different High Courts, the Bombay High Court, the Madhya Pradesh High Court and the Allahabad High Court, although arising from entirely different factual situations, reveal a remarkably consistent judicial approach towards police accountability. Each case concerns a distinct stage of the criminal process. The Bombay High Court examined the legality of custodial violence committed during investigation and the extent to which statutory protection under Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure could shield police officers accused of assaulting a suspect. The Madhya Pradesh High Court dealt with compliance with the newly enacted Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the constitutional requirement that every arrested person be informed, in writing, of the grounds of arrest. The Allahabad High Court, on the other hand, addressed what appeared at first glance to be a routine bail application but eventually transformed it into an inquiry into police negligence that had delayed adjudication of the applicants’ liberty.

Viewed independently, each judgment addresses a different procedural or substantive question. One concerns custodial violence, another concerns arrest procedure, and the third concerns administrative negligence in criminal proceedings. Yet, when read together, these decisions reveal an emerging constitutional narrative that extends well beyond their immediate facts. Collectively, they reject the notion that police accountability is confined to instances of spectacular misconduct such as torture or illegal detention. Instead, they emphasise that accountability permeates every stage of criminal administration—from the manner in which investigations are conducted, to the procedural safeguards accompanying arrest, to the institutional obligation of police authorities to cooperate with courts in the timely administration of justice.

Significantly, none of these judgments merely reiterates settled legal principles. Each court fashions remedies that seek to strengthen institutional compliance. The Bombay High Court refuses to allow police officers to invoke statutory immunity where allegations concern custodial assault to extract a confession, thereby reaffirming that violence cannot be characterised as an act performed in discharge of official duty. The Madhya Pradesh High Court, while declining to invalidate the arrest on the peculiar facts before it, nevertheless directs the Director General of Police to issue fresh circulars, warns that future violations of constitutional safeguards may invite departmental action, and treats repeated non-compliance with binding precedent as a matter of grave institutional concern. The Allahabad High Court goes a step further by imposing monetary costs on the State for police negligence that delayed adjudication of a bail application and permitting recovery of those costs from the erring officials after departmental enquiry.

What unites these judgments is not merely judicial criticism of the police. Courts have, on numerous occasions, criticised investigative lapses, custodial violence and administrative inefficiency. The significance of these three decisions lies in the manner in which the High Courts conceptualise police accountability. Rather than treating constitutional guarantees as abstract ideals, they recognise that the rule of law depends upon everyday institutional compliance. A police officer who assaults a suspect during investigation, an investigating officer who disregards mandatory constitutional safeguards while effecting an arrest, and officials whose negligence prolongs a person’s incarceration each undermine the administration of criminal justice, albeit in different ways. The constitutional injury is not confined to physical violence or illegal detention; it also extends to procedural disregard and bureaucratic indifference that compromise personal liberty and erode public confidence in the justice system.

Equally noteworthy is the evolving understanding of judicial supervision reflected in these decisions. Traditionally, courts have confined themselves to determining the legality of individual executive actions. These judgments demonstrate a willingness to move beyond adjudication of individual disputes towards ensuring institutional compliance. Directions to police headquarters, recommendations for departmental action, warnings of disciplinary proceedings, recovery of costs from erring officers, and rejection of statutory immunities collectively indicate that High Courts are increasingly employing their constitutional jurisdiction not merely to remedy individual violations but also to improve systemic functioning of law enforcement agencies. In doing so, they reaffirm the constitutional proposition that executive discretion remains subordinate to judicially enforceable standards of legality.

Another common feature is the courts’ refusal to permit procedural or statutory provisions to become instruments of impunity. In the Bombay case, Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, intended to protect honest public servants from vexatious litigation, is interpreted in a manner that prevents its misuse as a shield against allegations of custodial torture. In the Madhya Pradesh case, Section 47 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita is read in harmony with Article 22(1) and Supreme Court precedent, emphasising that communication of grounds of arrest is not a technical formality but a substantive constitutional guarantee. In the Allahabad case, the Court treats delays caused by police negligence not as mere administrative lapses but as failures that directly affect the timely adjudication of liberty.

These developments assume particular importance in the context of India’s ongoing transition from the Code of Criminal Procedure to the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. While legislative reform has altered statutory language and introduced procedural modifications, these judgments underscore that the constitutional foundations governing criminal procedure remain unchanged. Police powers continue to derive their legitimacy from constitutional limitations rather than statutory discretion alone. Neither investigative convenience, administrative inefficiency nor claims of official duty can dilute the guarantees embedded in Articles 14, 21 and 22.

Against this backdrop, the three decisions merit close examination—not merely as isolated judicial pronouncements, but as markers of an emerging jurisprudence that insists upon constitutional discipline at every stage of policing. Each judgment contributes a distinct dimension to that jurisprudence. Read together, they illuminate how High Courts are increasingly deploying constitutional principles to strengthen police accountability, reinforce procedural safeguards, and preserve the rule of law in everyday criminal administration.

Custodial Violence Is Never ‘Official Duty’: Bombay High Court

The first judgment in this piece comes from the Bombay High Court, which reaffirmed a fundamental constitutional principle: the authority to investigate crime does not include the authority to use violence. In Sanjay Bapuso Dalvi & Ors. v. State of Maharashtra, the Court held that assaulting a suspect to extract a confession can never constitute an act performed in the discharge of official duty, thereby denying police officers the protection of Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

Facts and the question before the court: The case arose from allegations that a man summoned to the Shivaji Nagar Police Station in Ichalkaranji during a murder investigation in November 2008 was detained overnight, assaulted and forced to confess. Following medical evidence and the complainant’s allegations, the Magistrate issued process against the police officers for offences including voluntarily causing hurt, wrongful confinement and criminal intimidation. The Sessions Court refused to discharge them.

Before the High Court, the officers argued that the alleged acts occurred during investigation of a cognisable offence and therefore attracted the protection of Section 197 CrPC, which bars prosecution of public servants for acts committed while acting or purporting to act in the discharge of official duty without prior governmental sanction.

The central issue was whether custodial assault allegedly committed to extract a confession could be regarded as an act connected with official duty.

Section 197 protects official functions, not abuse of power: Justice Sandesh Patil answered the question in the negative. The Court reiterated the settled principle that Section 197 is intended to protect honest public servants from vexatious litigation arising out of acts reasonably connected with their official responsibilities. It is not a substantive immunity from prosecution but a procedural safeguard available only where the impugned act bears a reasonable nexus with official duty.

Drawing upon the Constitution Bench decision in Matajog Dobey v. H.C. Bhari and subsequent rulings including Ganesh Chandra Jew v. State of Orissa, Om Prakash v. State of Jharkhand and Devinder Singh v. State of Punjab, the Court reaffirmed that even acts committed in excess of authority may require sanction if they remain connected to lawful official functions. However, criminal conduct wholly divorced from those functions cannot claim statutory protection merely because it occurred during official employment.

The distinction was decisive in the present case. Investigation of offences is undoubtedly an official function. Assaulting a suspect to secure a confession is not. The Court therefore rejected the argument that every act committed during an investigation automatically becomes an official act. The setting of the misconduct cannot determine its legal character.

Drawing a constitutional boundary: The Court emphasised that the police possess statutory authority to interrogate suspects, collect evidence and investigate offences, but no law authorises “third-degree” methods or custodial violence. Such conduct is not an excess committed while performing official duty; it is conduct wholly outside the scope of lawful police functions.

Justice Patil accordingly held that assaulting a suspect for a confessional statement “would never be said to be an act in discharge of official duty.” Accepting the prosecution case at face value—as required at the stage of issuance of process—the requirement of prior sanction under Section 197 had no application.

Importantly, the Court confined itself to the legal issue before it. It did not determine the guilt of the accused officers but only whether the prosecution could proceed without governmental sanction. Questions relating to the truth of the allegations were left to trial.

Constitutional significance: Although framed as a dispute over Section 197 CrPC, the judgment is rooted in the broader constitutional prohibition against custodial violence. It aligns with the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal, Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa and Nandini Satpathy v. P.L. Dani, all of which recognise that coercive interrogation is incompatible with Articles 20(3) and 21 of the Constitution.

The decision also reinforces the evidentiary policy underlying the law governing confessions. Indian criminal law has long treated police-obtained confessions with suspicion, recognising the dangers of coercive investigation. By refusing to extend statutory protection to allegations of custodial assault, the Bombay High Court ensures that Section 197 cannot become a procedural shield against accountability for torture.

More broadly, the judgment restores Section 197 to its intended purpose. The provision exists to protect bona fide exercise of public functions, not to immunise criminal misconduct. Had the Court accepted the petitioners’ argument, virtually every allegation of custodial violence could have been insulated behind the requirement of prior sanction simply because it occurred during an investigation.

Instead, the Court reaffirmed a fundamental constitutional proposition: official authority ends where illegality begins. Police powers derive legitimacy from law, and once those powers are exercised through violence or coercion, they cease to be protected as official acts. In doing so, the Bombay High Court laid down the first principle that runs through all three judgments—constitutional policing begins with recognising that the State’s coercive powers are always subject to constitutional limits.

The complete judgment may be read below:

Procedural Safeguards Are Constitutional Guarantees: Madhya Pradesh High Court

If the Bombay High Court’s decision placed substantive limits on police power, the Madhya Pradesh High Court focused on how that power must be exercised. In Dharmendra Lodhi v. State of Madhya Pradesh, the Court examined the constitutional requirement that an arrested person be informed of the grounds of arrest in writing under Section 47 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), while issuing far-reaching directions to ensure institutional compliance by the police.

Facts and the legal issue: The petitioner challenged his brother’s arrest under the NDPS Act through a habeas corpus petition, contending that the arrest was illegal because the investigating agency had failed to communicate the grounds of arrest in writing, as mandated by Section 47 BNSS and the Supreme Court’s decisions in Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India, Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra and Vihaan Kumar v. State of Haryana.

The State argued that although no separate written memorandum of grounds of arrest had been served, the accused had received a written notice under Section 50 of the NDPS Act, the seizure memo recording recovery of 86.85 kilograms of ganja, and information regarding the arrest had been conveyed to his family. The question before the Court, therefore, was whether these documents constituted sufficient compliance with the constitutional requirement.

Section 47 BNSS gives statutory effect to Article 22: The Division Bench of Justices G.S. Ahluwalia and Anuradha Shukla treated Section 47 BNSS not as a mere procedural provision but as a statutory expression of Article 22(1) of the Constitution, which guarantees every arrested person the right to be informed of the grounds of arrest.

Relying on Pankaj Bansal, Mihir Rajesh Shah and Vihaan Kumar, the Court observed that the requirement of written communication is intended to eliminate disputes over whether the grounds of arrest were actually conveyed. Written communication enables an arrested person to effectively challenge detention, seek legal representation, oppose remand and apply for bail, thereby making Article 22 a meaningful safeguard rather than an empty formality.

Substantial compliance, but a strong institutional warning: On the facts, however, the Court declined to invalidate the arrest. It held that the Section 50 NDPS notice, the seizure memo signed by the accused and the communication made to his brother sufficiently informed him of the reasons for his arrest. Although no independent document titled “grounds of arrest” had been furnished, the constitutional objective underlying Section 47 BNSS stood substantially fulfilled.

The significance of the judgment, however, lies less in this conclusion than in what followed. The Bench expressed serious concern that investigating officers continued to violate binding constitutional requirements despite repeated Supreme Court decisions, earlier High Court rulings and even a circular issued by the Madhya Pradesh Police Headquarters directing strict compliance. Such repeated lapses, the Court observed, pointed either to negligence or deliberate disregard of constitutional safeguards—both of which it described as “alarming”.

In one of its strongest observations, the Court remarked that if investigating officers routinely ignored mandatory procedures, the police department had to introspect whether it was inadvertently helping offenders secure release through illegal arrests rather than effectively prosecuting them. Procedural safeguards, the Bench emphasised, strengthen criminal investigations; they do not weaken them.

From individual relief to institutional accountability: Recognising that constitutional rights cannot depend solely upon post facto judicial intervention, the Court issued prospective directions to the Director General of Police to circulate fresh instructions requiring strict compliance with Section 47 BNSS and the Supreme Court’s decisions. It further directed that where investigating officers violated these requirements, the department should ordinarily presume deliberate non-compliance, initiate departmental proceedings and consider suspension and major penalties.

These directions mark an important shift from correcting individual violations to addressing institutional deficiencies. Rather than treating procedural lapses as isolated mistakes, the Court sought to embed constitutional compliance within police administration itself.

Significance of the decision: The judgment expands the understanding of police accountability beyond cases of excessive force or illegal detention. It recognises that constitutional policing also demands faithful adherence to procedural safeguards governing arrest. By reading Section 47 BNSS as a statutory embodiment of Article 22, the Court reaffirmed that procedural requirements are not technicalities but constitutional guarantees protecting personal liberty.

Although the Court upheld the arrest on the peculiar facts of the case, it left no ambiguity about the law going forward. Police powers remain legitimate only when exercised in accordance with constitutional procedure. Compliance with written grounds of arrest is therefore not a matter of administrative convenience but an indispensable component of due process.

In doing so, the Madhya Pradesh High Court adds a second dimension to the emerging jurisprudence on police accountability. While the Bombay High Court held that custodial violence can never be protected as official duty, the Madhya Pradesh High Court emphasised that even lawful police powers lose constitutional legitimacy when exercised without scrupulous adherence to mandatory procedural safeguards.

The complete judgment may be read below:

Administrative Negligence as a Constitutional Wrong: Allahabad High Court

If the Bombay High Court’s decision drew a constitutional boundary around the misuse of police power, and the Madhya Pradesh High Court underscored that lawful policing is inseparable from procedural fairness, the Allahabad High Court’s decision introduces a third, and equally significant, dimension to constitutional policing. It recognises that the rule of law may be undermined not only through abuse of authority or violation of procedural safeguards, but also through institutional indifference, bureaucratic inertia and administrative negligence.

Unlike the previous two cases, the controversy before the Court did not concern custodial violence, illegal arrest or investigative excesses. It arose from what appeared to be an ordinary bail application. Yet, in deciding that application, Justice Arun Kumar Singh Deshwal transformed a routine criminal proceeding into a broader examination of how police inaction can obstruct judicial administration and unnecessarily prolong deprivation of personal liberty.

The judgment is important because it expands the constitutional understanding of police accountability beyond the exercise of coercive powers. It reminds that the constitutional obligations of investigating agencies do not end with lawful arrest or fair investigation. They equally encompass timely cooperation with judicial proceedings. Where police negligence delays adjudication of liberty, the constitutional injury is no less significant merely because it results from omission rather than affirmative abuse of power.

Facts and background: The proceedings arose from a bail application filed by the parents-in-law of a deceased woman, who were accused of offences under Sections 80(2) and 85 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita read with Sections 3 and 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act.

Upon examining the material on record, the Court found no sufficient evidence indicating that the applicants had subjected the deceased to cruelty or harassment for dowry soon before her death. The statements of independent witnesses pointed instead to ordinary matrimonial discord between the husband and wife. Finding no material to sustain the allegations against the parents-in-law, the Court concluded that they were entitled to bail.

Ordinarily, the matter would have ended there. Instead, before disposing of the application, the Court turned to an entirely different question—why a bail application that could have been decided much earlier had remained pending for more than ten additional days.

The answer, according to the Court, lay not in judicial delay or legal complexity, but in the repeated failure of the investigating agency to furnish the necessary instructions and case diary despite repeated communications from the High Court. It was this administrative lapse, rather than the merits of the bail application itself, that became the central focus of the judgment.

The institutional failure that prompted judicial intervention: The chronology recorded by the Court revealed a sustained pattern of administrative indifference rather than an isolated procedural lapse.

The Office of the Joint Director (Prosecution), attached to the Allahabad High Court, supplied a copy of the bail application to the police pairokar on June 17, 2026. This was followed by an alert to the Superintendent of Police on June 19 and a reminder on June 29. Despite these repeated communications, the investigating agency failed to furnish the necessary instructions to enable the Government Advocate to assist the Court.

Even when the matter was taken up on 3 July 2026, the Court attempted to facilitate compliance by directing the prosecution to obtain the case diary electronically through the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS), thereby eliminating any practical difficulty in transmitting records.

Yet even this direction went unheeded. Instead of producing the case diary, the police supplied only the criminal antecedents of the accused, leaving the Court without the material necessary to decide the bail application. The sequence demonstrated that the delay was not the consequence of unavoidable administrative constraints. The High Court had repeatedly reminded the investigating agency, suggested alternative methods of compliance and afforded ample opportunity to furnish the requisite records. Nevertheless, the necessary instructions remained unavailable, preventing timely adjudication of a matter directly affecting personal liberty.

Translating judicial censure into institutional accountability: Having concluded that the delay in deciding the bail application was attributable solely to police negligence, the Court declined to treat the lapse as a matter warranting only administrative criticism. Instead, it imposed costs of ₹50,000 upon the State Government, directing that the amount be paid to the applicants. Simultaneously, it granted the State liberty to recover the amount from the erring officials after conducting an appropriate departmental enquiry.

This direction is perhaps the most significant aspect of the judgment. Indian courts have frequently expressed dissatisfaction with administrative inefficiency or investigative lapses, but far fewer decisions translate such criticism into enforceable consequences. By imposing monetary costs, the Court recognised that bureaucratic negligence is not a victimless administrative failure. Where executive inaction delays adjudication of liberty, the prejudice is suffered by litigants whose incarceration continues solely because the State failed to discharge its institutional obligations.

Equally significant is the Court’s refusal to allow the burden of that negligence to remain permanently upon the public exchequer. By permitting recovery from the responsible officials after due enquiry, the judgment carefully distinguishes between institutional liability and individual accountability. The State remains constitutionally answerable for the functioning of its agencies, but the financial consequences of proven negligence need not ultimately be borne by taxpayers. In doing so, the Court fashioned a remedy that simultaneously compensates those affected, reinforces governmental responsibility and preserves personal accountability within the police hierarchy.

More importantly, the order signals that constitutional accountability is not exhausted by declarations of illegality. Administrative indifference that obstructs judicial proceedings may itself attract tangible consequences. The judgment therefore moves beyond symbolic judicial disapproval and adopts a remedial approach aimed at improving institutional discipline within the criminal justice system.

The complete judgment may be read below:

Police Accountability: From individual misconduct to institutional constitutionalism

At first glance, the three High Court decisions appear to address entirely different questions. The Bombay High Court considered whether police officers accused of custodial assault could invoke the protection of Section 197 CrPC. The Madhya Pradesh High Court examined whether the constitutional requirement of communicating the grounds of arrest in writing under Article 22 and Section 47 BNSS had been complied with. The Allahabad High Court dealt with police negligence that delayed adjudication of a bail application.

Read individually, each judgment resolves a distinct procedural issue. Read together, however, they articulate a broader constitutional doctrine on police accountability. The common thread running through all three decisions is that the legitimacy of policing does not flow merely from statutory powers but from faithful adherence to constitutional limitations. Police accountability is no longer confined to punishing overt abuse such as custodial violence or illegal detention. It now extends to every stage of the criminal justice process—from investigation and arrest to procedural fairness, administrative diligence and cooperation with judicial institutions.

The Bombay High Court establishes the first principle: official duty cannot be used as a shield for unconstitutional conduct. Custodial assault and coercive violence are fundamentally incompatible with lawful policing and therefore fall outside the protection of Section 197 CrPC. The decision reinforces that statutory immunity exists to protect bona fide public functions, not acts that violate Article 21.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court adds a second dimension by treating procedural safeguards as constitutional guarantees rather than technical formalities. Reading Section 47 BNSS through Article 22 and the Supreme Court’s decisions in Pankaj Bansal, Mihir Rajesh Shah and Vihaan Kumar, the Court holds that informing an arrested person of the grounds of arrest in writing is integral to constitutional fairness. More importantly, it moves beyond the individual case to address systemic police non-compliance, directing institutional reforms and departmental accountability so that constitutional safeguards become part of everyday policing rather than case-specific judicial corrections.

The Allahabad High Court completes the trilogy by recognising that constitutional injury may arise not only from misuse of power but also from administrative indifference. Police accountability includes the obligation to assist the administration of justice with diligence and efficiency. By imposing costs of ₹50,000 on the State for avoidable delay in deciding a bail application, directing payment to the applicants, permitting recovery from erring officers after departmental enquiry, and ordering an inquiry into the lapses, the Court converts bureaucratic negligence into a matter of constitutional accountability. Administrative omissions that unnecessarily prolong deprivation of liberty are treated as inconsistent with Article 21 no less than affirmative executive misconduct.

Collectively, these judgments also demonstrate the evolving role of constitutional courts. Rather than merely correcting completed legal wrongs, the High Courts increasingly function as institutional supervisors, issuing directions aimed at improving governance, strengthening internal accountability mechanisms and embedding constitutional discipline within police administration. Whether by denying statutory protection to officers accused of custodial violence, directing police authorities to institutionalise compliance with arrest safeguards, or imposing financial consequences for administrative negligence, the courts are moving beyond dispute resolution towards structural constitutional oversight.

Equally significant is the continuity they establish despite the transition to India’s new criminal laws. Although the BNSS has replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure, these decisions affirm that legislative reform cannot dilute constitutional guarantees. The Constitution—and particularly Articles 21 and 22—continues to provide the normative framework within which every police power must be exercised.

Taken together, the three judgments articulate an emerging constitutional ethic of policing founded upon three interconnected propositions:

• Police powers cannot be exercised through violence or coercion that falls outside lawful investigation.
• Every exercise of coercive authority must comply with constitutional and statutory procedural safeguards protecting personal liberty.
• Police institutions bear a continuing obligation to function diligently, transparently and responsibly in aid of the administration of justice.

The cumulative message is both simple and profound. Constitutional policing is measured not merely by the absence of abuse, but by affirmative fidelity to the rule of law at every stage of the criminal justice process. In reaffirming that principle, the Bombay, Madhya Pradesh and Allahabad High Courts have collectively advanced an important and evolving doctrine of institutional constitutionalism—one in which police legitimacy derives not from the breadth of statutory power, but from disciplined adherence to constitutional values.

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The post Three High Courts, One Message: Police power has constitutional limits appeared first on SabrangIndia.