According to data presented in Lok Sabha during March, at least 622 sanitation workers died in sewers and septic tank incidents across India since 2017 with Uttar Pradesh recording the highest fatalities at 86. This highlights the structural risks and vulnerabilities faced by sanitation workers.

At a press conference organised by the Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch (DASAM) in New Delhi in May 2026, they revealed that at least 36 sanitation workers died while cleaning sewers, septic tanks, drains and sewage chambers between March and May 2026. Referring to the data presented in Parliament, DASAM said that out of the 622 deaths, 317 occurred between 2021 and 2025. Most of the workers belonged to Valmiki communities, other historically marginalised caste groups, or migrant labour background. [1]

Most sanitation workers in Ward 66 belong to the Balmiki caste, historically associated with sanitation labour and among the most marginalised Dalit communities. Many of these workers live in clustered settlements and are employed, directly or indirectly, by the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC), reflecting the enduring link between caste and sanitation work.

Workers further allege that Rajput used casteist slurs for the workers, even threatening termination for non-compliance. Such allegations also raise questions under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, which criminalises caste-based abuse and intimidation.

Altogether, these accusations point to potential violations of legal protections against caste-based discrimination. Despite these allegations, the supervisor continues to remain in his position, raising questions about accountability and enforcement of existing laws.

While sanitation workers employed by the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) are issued formal joining letters outlining the terms and conditions to their employment, access to these documents is not always guaranteed. A 25-year-old worker, who wished to remain anonymous, said he has been working with the LMC for nearly a year, yet his joining letter has been withheld. He alleges that requests for the document have been met with derogatory remarks about his caste and class, along with threats of termination. “What are we supposed to show when we get into an accident?” questioned one of the workers.

The workers expressed their dissatisfaction by gathering on June 10, 2026 to protest and demand their additional Rs. 2000 and four days of holidays, while giving the authorities 3 days to act. They allege that authorities at Lucknow Swachhata Abhiyan (LSA) had stated they will be firing Avinash, but they are yet to hear back, despite three days already having passed by.

The allegations against Rajput, however, are not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern within the sanitation system in Lucknow. One where accountability is inconsistent and often remains unchecked.

“The mayor, Sushma Kharakwa, had already fired him once. We are not sure why he came back,” said another worker.

While ward 66 is struggling to call out the corruption and discrimination, workers say that such situations are far from unique. Across all wards, Sweepers working with LMC are expected to also clean the sewers or pick up animal carcasses if asked. Many of these workers, often in their 20s, say they are required to descend up to five feet into sewers to carry out manual cleaning. For deeper drains, the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) deploys mechanised equipment, though workers allege this is not always consistently implemented.

Cost considerations often shape these decisions, with workers revealing that bringing in machinery to clean the sewer becomes expensive. The cost adds up with fuel, travel and hiring operators.

This is where private contractors come in with the hopes of saving money that would otherwise be spent on the machinery. “thekedaars allegedly take Rs. 5000-6000 and give their workers 500-600. A government employed sanitation worker would get around Rs. 1000.”

While law is framed to safeguard Scheduled castes, sanitation workers in Lucknow are still fighting for lawful existence. On June 6, 2026 Lalaram, a 28-year-old sanitation worker went into a manhole with only a rope as instructed by his supervisor on scene, Akash Kumar. He soon lost consciousness and was rushed to a hospital, his supervisor. Initially being taken to Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences (RMLIMS), Akash diverted him to a private hospital. Lalaram died before receiving medical care and Akash Kumar fled the scene. The ward’s corporator is Arun Rai, a representative of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). When contacted, he refused to be interviewed on the topic.

The incident drew responses from city authorities. Mayor Sushma Kharakwa and Municipal Commissioner Gaurav Kumar announced action against the contractor, including blacklisting the firm and initiating an FIR. Financial assistance was also promised to the family.

Workers remain sceptical, questioning whether meaningful change will follow. Many say that the response to the incident has been driven largely by media attention and local political support, which may ensure compensation for the family. However, the larger concern around the safety of sanitation workers continues to persist. “Usually, the supervisors of these private contractors run away after such incidents, and then nothing ends up happening,” said one of the workers.

With Lucknow ranking the third cleanest city in 2024-2025. The irony remains, with regular derogatory comments and a clear spatial hostility moving fluidly between the private and government employees for sanitation work. 

(The author is an independent journalist, currently pursuing masters in Convergent Journalism at AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia)

[1] These statistics presented in Parliament were reported I The Hindu among other publications

Related:

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8 sanitation workers die in UP in last 10 days due to hazardous cleaning, activists calls for FIR 

Safai Shramik Union raises demands for a law that safeguards rights of sanitation workers: Maharashtra

The post Lucknow: Caste hierarchies & contract labour exploitation among sanitation workers appeared first on SabrangIndia.

That challenge from citizens has now reached the Bombay High Court. This week, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) and the Forum Against Oppression of Women filed a writ petition challenging the constitutional validity of the Maharashtra Special Public Safety Act (MSPSA), contending that the law violates fundamental constitutional guarantees and grants excessive, unchecked powers to the executive. The challenge marks the beginning of a legal test for a legislation that has generated sustained opposition from civil liberties organisations, trade unions, academics, lawyers, students’ groups, political parties and democratic rights movements across Maharashtra.

Importantly, many of the arguments now being advanced before the High Court closely mirror concerns that were repeatedly raised during the legislative process itself. Among the organisations that consistently opposed the legislation was Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), which submitted detailed objections to the Joint Select Committee examining the then Bill, participated in the broader state-wide campaign against the legislation, and warned that the law’s vague provisions could become a tool for suppressing dissent rather than addressing genuine security threats.

A constitutional challenge to the heart of the law

According to the petition filed before the High Court, the Act suffers from a fundamental constitutional defect: it authorises severe restrictions on freedoms of speech, expression, association and assembly without incorporating the procedural safeguards that constitutional jurisprudence requires when the State seeks to limit such rights.

The petition argues that the law violates Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution and undermines broader constitutional principles of liberty, equality and democratic participation. It further contends that the Act creates a framework through which organisations can be declared unlawful on the basis of broad executive discretion, while insulating those decisions from meaningful scrutiny.

Particularly significant is the challenge to the Act’s definitions of “unlawful activity” and “unlawful organisation.” According to the petitioners, these definitions are so broad and vague that they can potentially encompass trade unions, social movements, human rights organisations, political opposition groups and individuals engaged in peaceful dissent.

The challenge therefore strikes at the central architecture of the legislation rather than merely isolated provisions. It asks whether a law ostensibly enacted to combat extremism can constitutionally employ language so expansive that ordinary democratic activity may fall within its ambit.

A warning raised long before the Act was passed

The constitutional challenge did not emerge in a vacuum. For months before the legislation was enacted, Maharashtra witnessed one of the most extensive civil society mobilisations against a proposed law in recent memory. More than 12,750 objections and suggestions were reportedly submitted to the Joint Select Committee examining the Bill, making it one of the largest public responses ever received by the Maharashtra legislature. More than ninety percent of the submissions reportedly opposed the legislation.

Citizens for Justice and Peace was among the organisations at the forefront of this campaign. In April 2025, CJP submitted a detailed objection memorandum to the Joint Select Committee, warning that the legislation posed a serious threat to constitutional freedoms and democratic dissent. CJP argued that the Bill’s framing around the idea of “Urban Naxalism” rested on an inherently vague and politically charged concept that lacked clear legal meaning. Significantly, the organisation pointed out that the Union Ministry of Home Affairs itself had previously stated that it does not use the term “urban naxal” as an official category in dealing with Left-Wing Extremism. CJP warned that a law justified through such an indeterminate concept risked becoming a mechanism for targeting journalists, activists, artists, civil society organisations and political critics rather than genuine security threats.

Today, many of those concerns have reappeared in the constitutional challenge before the High Court.

The battle over “unlawful activity”

One of the most striking parallels between the writ petition and earlier civil society objections concerns the Act’s definition of unlawful activity.

The petition before the High Court argues that the definition is overbroad and vague, allowing the State to invoke the law against a wide range of lawful democratic activities.

CJP’s earlier objections had similarly focused on Section 2(f), arguing that phrases such as conduct that creates a “danger or menace to public order” were left undefined and provided no clear legal standards. According to CJP, terms such as “menace” were capable of subjective interpretation and could permit authorities to categorise ordinary activities as unlawful according to their discretion. The concern was not merely semantic. Constitutional law has long recognised that vague criminal provisions create opportunities for arbitrary enforcement. When citizens cannot reasonably determine what conduct is prohibited, enforcement becomes dependent on the discretion of the executive rather than the rule of law.

That concern now sits at the centre of the High Court challenge.

The question of executive power

The writ petition also challenges the breadth of powers conferred upon the State government to declare organisations unlawful. Again, this reflects a recurring theme in earlier objections raised by civil liberties groups.

CJP argued that the proposed framework granted extraordinary authority to the executive while providing inadequate independent oversight. It questioned the composition of the Advisory Board established under the legislation, noting that members need only be qualified for appointment as High Court judges rather than serving judicial officers. Because appointments are ultimately controlled by the government itself, CJP warned that the mechanism lacked sufficient institutional independence. The broader concern was that a law designed to regulate political organisations and associations should not depend primarily upon executive opinion.

The constitutional challenge now similarly questions whether the legislation creates a system in which governmental discretion is insufficiently constrained by objective standards and procedural safeguards.

Existing laws already covered the field

Another criticism repeatedly advanced by opponents of the legislation was that Maharashtra already possessed an extensive arsenal of security laws.

CJP argued that provisions dealing with terrorism, organised crime, unlawful activities and threats to national security already exist through laws such as the UAPA, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act. It questioned why an additional statute with even broader powers was necessary at all. The constitutional challenge raises a related issue. If existing criminal law already addresses violent extremism and organised criminal activity, what precisely justifies a separate law empowering the State to declare organisations unlawful through broad and vaguely worded standards?

This question becomes especially important because the Act itself repeatedly invokes concerns regarding Left-Wing Extremism while failing to define key terms such as “naxalism” or “left-wing extremist” within its operative provisions.

A state-wide democratic resistance

The present litigation is also the culmination of a much broader political and civic campaign. In April 2025, protests against the Bill were organised across Maharashtra, bringing together civil liberties organisations, workers’ groups, farmers’ organisations, students’ groups, political parties and grassroots movements. Demonstrations took place across dozens of districts and reflected an unusually broad coalition united by concerns regarding civil liberties and democratic freedoms.

CJP played a visible role in that mobilisation, participating in a wider coalition that argued the legislation threatened constitutionally protected rights of speech, association, assembly and protest. The campaign consistently maintained that the law’s vague language created the risk that peaceful political opposition could be conflated with threats to public security. The filing of the writ petition therefore represents not the beginning of resistance to the law, but the latest stage of a struggle that has been unfolding for over a year. The formal objections raised by CJP have been detailed and may be perused here.

Why the High Court’s decision matters

The challenge before the Bombay High Court extends beyond the future of a single state law. At its core lies a constitutional question that has repeatedly confronted Indian courts: how far can the State go in the name of security before constitutional freedoms are impermissibly compromised?

The petition asks whether a law can authorise severe consequences, including the declaration of organisations as unlawful, through definitions that have been described as vague, subjective and susceptible to political misuse. It raises concerns about executive overreach, procedural fairness, access to justice and the protection of democratic dissent.

For organisations such as Citizens for Justice and Peace, the issue has never been whether the State can act against genuine violence or armed insurgency. Rather, the concern has been whether legislation drafted in the language of security can ultimately be deployed against lawful political activity.

The complete dissent note by CJP may be read here.

Detailed reports may be read here, here and here.

Related:

Public Resistance and Democratic Assertion: India through protests, 2025

Dissent Note: The alarming scope of Maharashtra’s Special Public Safety Bill, 2024

Censorship After NEET: A substitute for accountability

The Supreme Court in 2025: When procedure trumped principle

Assam, the third state to pass UCC: Gender justice or targeted communalism the aim?

The post From Protest to Petition: Maharashtra’s Public Safety Act in the dock appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Rashtriya Swayamseval Sangh (RSS) as the Gurukul (university) of Hindutva (the ideology that advocates India being a majoritarian theocratic state) specialises in regular training of their cadres at which truncated (read manipulated and selective) versions of history are dished out, ingrained. As the latest evidence of this, we find on the 51^st anniversary of the Emergency [1975-77], a number of RSS-BJP leaders enlightening us Indians on “how the RSS opposed the Emergency, how valiantly its cadres challenged the dictatorial rule of Indira Gandhi and made great sacrifices during anti-Emergency movement” etc. The newspapers are filled with advertisements announcing ‘Samvidhan Hatya Divas’ in which none less than Prime Minister Modi is depicted bowing to the Constitution.

[The Indian Express, Delhi, June 25, 2026]

Only last year, the RSS English organ of the RSS, the Organizer (June 24, 2025) presented PM Modi as a singular symbol of the fight against Emergency and wrote:

“The lesson had been burned into public memory. The Emergency became more than a chapter in history. It became a warning. For Narendra Modi, it was not just a past event. It was part of his personal journey. As Prime Minister, he has often reminded the nation of those dark times…It was about imprisoning free thought, art, and expression. That period left behind not just scars, but reminders. It taught us that freedom is earned, not gifted.”

 [‘National Emergency 1975: The murder of the Indian republic on June 25,  https://organiser.org/2025/06/24/298840/bharat/national-emergency-1975-the-murder-of-the-indian-republic-on-june-25/]

Let us evaluate first, the claim that the RSS-BJP rulers are/have been committed to the liberal democratic values as a faith. The most prominent ideologue of the RSS, MS Golwalkar, also known as ‘Guru of Hate’ [whom PM Modi credits for grooming him into a political leader] while addressing the 1350 top level cadres of the RSS in 1940 declared,

“RSS is inspired by one flag, one leader and one ideology is lighting the flame of Hindutva in each and every corner of this great land.”

[Golwalkar, MS, Shri Guruji Samagar Darshan (collected works of Golwalkar in Hindi), Bhartiya Vichar Sadhna, Nagpur, nd., vol. I, p. 11.]

With such a philosophical love for totalitarianism the RSS has always balked against the sharing of power. It has also been in strong opposition to the federal structure of the constitution, a ‘Basic’ feature of the India polity. Golwalkar declared in 1961,

“Today’s federal form of government not only gives birth but also nourishes the feelings of separatism… It must be completely uprooted, constitution purified, and unitary form of government be established.”

[Ibid. vol. III, p. 128.]

So far as the claims of the outfit battling the Emergency is concerned the RSS, these “claims” need to be evaluated in the light of contemporary narratives including the RSS documents. In this connection two narratives one by a veteran thinker and journalist of India, Prabhash Joshi and the other by TV Rajeswar, former Intelligence Bureau [IB] chief who was the deputy chief of IB during the Emergency are of immense importance. Both, one a senior official of the government of India and the other, a senior journalist in the Hindi language, recounted the days of Emergency (or state terrorism) when RSS surrendered to the repressive regime of Indira Gandhi, assured her and her son, Sanjay Gandhi to enforce faithfully the draconian 20-point programme announced by the Emergency regime. They in fact negotiated surrender with the Indira Gandhi regime. A large number of RSS cadres came out of jails by submitting MAAFINAMAAS (mercy petitions). This account by Prabhash Joshi appeared in the English weekly Tehelka on the 25th anniversary of the Emergency.[1] According to him even during the Emergency “there was always a lurking sense of suspicion, a distance, a discreet lack of trust” about RSS’ joining the anti-Emergency struggle. He went on to recount that,

“Balasaheb Deoras, then RSS chief, wrote a letter to Indira Gandhi pledging to help implement the notorious 20-point programme of Sanjay Gandhi. This is the real character of the RSS…You can decipher a line of action, a pattern. Even during the Emergency, many among the RSS and Jana Sangh who came out of the jails, gave mafinamas. They were the first to apologize. Only their leaders remained in jail: Atal Behari Vajpayee [most of the time in hospital], LK Advani, even Arun Jaitley. But the RSS did not fight the Emergency. So why is the BJP trying to appropriate that memory?”

Prabhash Joshi concluded that “they are not a fighting force, and they are never keen to fight. They are basically a compromising lot. They are never genuinely against the government”.

TV Rajeswar, who served as Governor of Uttar Pradesh and Sikkim penned a book, ‘India: The Crucial Years” [Harper Collins] corroborated the fact that “Not only they (RSS) were supportive of this [Emergency], they wanted to establish contact apart from Mrs. Gandhi, with Sanjay Gandhi also”[2]

Rajeswar in an interview with Karan Thapar also disclosed that Deoras:

“Quietly established a link with the PM’s house and expressed strong support for several steps taken to enforce order and discipline in the country. Deoras was keen to meet Mrs. Gandhi and Sanjay. But Mrs. Gandhi refused.”

[Ibid]

According to Rajeswar’s book,

“Sanjay Gandhi’s concerted drive to enforce family planning, particularly among Muslims, had earned Deoras’s approbation.”[3] Rajeswar also shared the fact that even after Emergency the “organization (RSS) had specifically conveyed its support to the Congress in the post-emergency elections.”[4] It will be interesting to note that even according to Subramanian Swamy during the Emergency period, most of the senior leaders of RSS had betrayed the struggle against the Emergency.[5]

The contemporary documents from the RSS archives also corroborate that the narratives of Prabhash Joshi and Rajeswar were/are accurate. The third supremo of the RSS, Madhukar Dattatraya Deoras wrote the first letter to Indira Gandhi within two months of the imposition of Emergency. It was the time when state terror was widespread. In letter dated August 22, 1975, he began with the following praise of Indira:

“I heard your address to the nation which you delivered on August 15, 1975, from Red Fort on radio in jail [Yervada jail] with attention. Your address was timely and balanced so I decided to write to you”.   

[Madhukar Dattatraya Deoras, Hindu Sangathan aur Sattavaadi Rajneeti, Jagriti Prkashan, Noida, 1997, p. 270.]

Indira Gandhi did not respond to it. So Deoras wrote another letter to Indira on November 10, 1975. He began his letter with congratulating her on being cleared by the Supreme Court of disqualification which was ordered by the Allahabad High Court, 

“All the five Justices of the Supreme Court have declared your election constitutional, heartiest greetings for it.” It is to be noted that opposition was firmly of the opinion that this judgment was influenced by the ruling party, the Congress. Deoras also also stated that

“The RSS has been named in context of Jaiprakash Narayan’s movement. The government has also connected RSS with Gujarat movement and Bihar movement without any reason…Sangh has no relation with these movements…”

[Ibid., pp. 272-73.]

Since Indira Gandhi did not respond to this letter either, RSS chief got hold of Vinoba Bhave who supported the Emergency religiously and was a favourite of Indira Gandhi. In a letter dated January 12, 1976, Deoras begged that Acharya should suggest a way by which the ban on RSS was removed.

[Ibid. pp. 275-77.]

Since Acharya too did not respond to Deoras letter, the latter in another letter without date wrote in desperation,

“According to press reports respected PM [Indira Gandhi] is going to meet you at Pavnar Ashram on January 24. At that time there will be discussion about the present condition of the country. I beg you to try to remove the wrong assumptions of PM about RSS so that ban on RSS is lifted and RSS members are released from jails. We are looking forward for the times when RSS and its members are able to contribute to the plans of progress which are being run in all the fields under the leadership of PM.”

 [Ibid. p. 278.]

[All these letters in Hindi are being reproduced from a publication of the RSS at the end of this article.]

Even a prominent Hindutva ideologue Balraj Madhok who as an RSS whole-timer founded Bhartiya Jana Sangh (1951) on RSS command confessed:

“Sarsanghchalak of the Sangh Shri Bal Saheb Deoras was a MISA prisoner in Pune’s Yervada Jail…his life was full of comforts. Therefore, he wrote two letters to the jailed Indira Gandhi on August 22, 1975 and November 10, 1975 to change her attitude towards the Sangh and lift the ban on it. He also wrote a letter to Shri Vinoba Bhave and requested him to try to remove the feeling of opposition towards the Sangh from Indira Gandhi’s mind. These letters were leaked by the government, and they were published in many newspapers. This naturally had an adverse effect on the morale of the Sangh volunteers and the Satyagraha movement became almost dead.”

[Madhok, Balraj, Zindagi Ka Safar –3: Deendayal Upadhyay Ki Hatya Se Indira Gandhi Ki Hatya Tak (Journey of Life-3: From the Murder of Deendayal Upadhyay to the Murder of Indira Gandhi), Dinman Prakashan, 2003, pp. 188-189.]

It is also historically significant that former President of the Indian Republic, Pranab Mukherjee was invited by the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat as the chief guest at the graduation ceremony of its new recruits must be working over-time to convert India into a Hindu state. Pranab Mukherjee had been indicted as one of the top leaders of Congress for Emergency excesses by the Shah Commission.

Given this history, it is quite regrettable if not downright shameful that despite these facts thousands of RSS cadres continue to get monthly pension for their ostensible “persecution” during the Emergency. The BJP ruled states like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra decided to award a monthly pension of Rs 20,000 to those who were jailed during the Emergency period for less than two months, and Rs 10,000 to those who were jailed for less than a month. This rule took care of the financial interest of those RSS cadres who submitted mercy letters completing only one- or two-months’ jail term. For securing this not insignificant amount in pension there was/has been no condition imposed that the beneficiary should have been in jail for the whole period of the Emergency!

Interestingly, in the case of anti-British freedom struggle there has not been even a single RSS cadre to claim the freedom fighter pension. It may be noted that nobody remembers hundreds of Communist youths, branded as Naxals killed in fake encounters during the Emergency. Interestingly, Maharashtra-based Shiv Sena, the Hindutva co-traveller of the RSS openly supported the Emergency.

Renowned senior journalist and one of the most widely read political commentators in India today, Coomi Kapoor evaluating the RSS-BJP over the past last 12 years forthrightly has observed:

“Increasingly, those in power believe they are not directly answerable to the people. The government’s radio silence over major mess-ups in the NEET and CBSE examinations, affecting lakhs of students, is a telling example. To respond to public complaints is perceived as a weakness by today’s regime. The lack of internal debate in the ruling party, too, is perturbing. The BJP parliamentary board rarely meets and when it does, it merely rubber stamps decisions taken elsewhere. The surprise elevation of inexperienced junior party persons as chief ministers, without any prior consultations, is yet another instance of the absence of inner-party democracy. No less concerning is the falling standard of independence and probity of constitutional bodies meant to uphold democratic values.

“The Election Commission’s blatant exclusion of over 90 lakh names from the West Bengal SIR rolls unnecessarily put a question mark over an election where the public mood was clearly against Mamata Banerjee…The crux of a true democracy is securing a majority in Parliament through an ethical recourse to the ballot box, not by winning over opposition legislators by whatever means, fair or foul, post elections. In the ongoing ruthless mission to secure a two-thirds majority, one recalls uneasily just how Indira Gandhi utilised her brute two-thirds majority to subvert our Constitution and push through Emergency rule.

“As the country marks the half-century anniversary of the Emergency, many ruling party supporters wax eloquent on Indira Gandhi’s Emergency excesses as a warning to future generations not to go down that discredited path and derail democracy. Ironically, many of the practices of the Emergency are actually being emulated today. Even the unnecessary sycophancy of rulers in advertisements, bill boards and at public events seems ominously reminiscent of that black period and recalls Congress President D K Barooah’s fawning slogan, ‘Indira is India and India is Indira’.’’

Coomi Kapoor, ‘Five decades after the Emergency, difficult questions, unheeded warnings’, reported The Indian Express.

So, the writing on the wall is clear. Indira Gandhi had imposed the Emergency, using Articles (352-360) of the Indian constitution; the same Indira Gandhi within 18 months announced general elections on January 18, 1977 and officially lifted the Emergency on March 21, 1977. Political prisoners who had been imprisoned were released and free to contest the elections that were held soon thereafter. Despite the robust opposition to the Emergency, there was never a question or doubt that the elections of 1977 would be free or fair. Under the present Modi regime (a minority government in its ‘third’ term), there is no question of withdrawing the state of undeclared emergency that has never been formally imposed. As institution after institution is sought to be, and is subverted, including the hitherto independent Election Commission of India, an unscrupulous regime continues with its agenda of snatching all democratic freedoms!

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

[1] http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main13.asp?filename=op070205And_Not_Even.asp; this copy is available in libraries

[2] https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/rss-backed-indira-gandhis-emergency-ex-ib-chief-264127-2015-09-21

[3] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/ib-ex-chiefs-book-rss-chief-deoras-had-backed-some-emergency-moves/

[4] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/RSS-backed-Emergency-reveals-former-IB-chief/articleshow/49052143.cms

[5] https://medium.com/@hindu.nationalist1/double-game-of-senior-rss-leaders-during-emergency-74abc07a4fa8

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Syama Prasad Mookerjee: ‘Patriot’ or collaborator of British Rulers & Muslim League?

Womens Reservation Bill 2026: Women’s Rights & the RSS

Have Hindus always been Vegetarian?

The post 51st Anniversary of Emergency in India: While the RSS supported the Emergency, it now ruthlessly presides over an ‘undeclared Emergency’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As reported by The Wire, on April 26, 2026, residents of Manoharpura in Mathura discovered that graves inside the Ahl-e-Muslimeen Kabristan had allegedly been damaged during a demolition exercise carried out with JCB machines working under the supervision of local authorities. Burial shrouds were exposed, graves were uprooted and skeletal remains reportedly became visible. Families arrived to find the resting places of parents, grandparents and relatives disturbed, turning what should have been a protected space of mourning and remembrance into a site of anguish and outrage.

The cemetery is not an informal burial ground. According to documents cited by The Wire, the Ahl-e-Muslimeen Kabristan is a gazetted waqf property dating back to 1909 and recognised by the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board. For generations, it has served as the burial ground for local Muslim families. Residents allege that nine graves were damaged, while six trees, boundary structures, fencing pillars and other parts of the cemetery were also destroyed during the operation.

Yet what transformed the incident from a local controversy into a matter of wider constitutional concern was not only the damage itself, but the state’s response to it.

Documents reviewed by The Wire reportedly show that the Mathura-Vrindavan Municipal Corporation formally acknowledged that approximately nine graves had been damaged. In a communication issued following complaints lodged through Uttar Pradesh’s Integrated Grievance Redressal System (IGRS), authorities reportedly directed compensation at the rate of Rs 100 per grave, valuing the destruction of nine graves at Rs 900. Separate assessments were conducted for damaged trees and fencing structures, resulting in compensation calculations for those losses as well.

For many residents, the issue was not merely that the amount was small. Rather, it was the very act of assigning a bureaucratic value to disturbed graves that appeared shocking. The controversy has therefore become less about the amount of compensation and more about what the calculation itself represents.

The question repeatedly raised by affected families is a simple one: what is the value of a grave?

The significance of that question becomes clearer when one considers the unique nature of burial grounds. A cemetery is not merely land. Nor is it simply a collection of physical structures. Burial grounds occupy a distinctive place within every society because they exist at the intersection of memory, religion, family history and human dignity. They are spaces where communities maintain continuity with previous generations and where the living continue to honour those who have passed away.

Every grave represents a life lived and relationships that continue beyond death. A parent, a sibling, a spouse, a grandparent or a child may be buried there. The disturbance of a grave therefore affects far more than physical property. It disrupts a family’s connection to the deceased and a community’s relationship with its own history.

This is why societies across cultures and faith traditions have historically treated the disturbance of burial grounds as a particularly serious wrong. Respect for the dead has long been regarded as one of the most basic markers of civilisation itself. Even international humanitarian law, which governs armed conflict, contains provisions concerning the respectful treatment of human remains and burial sites. The protection of the dead is recognised as a moral obligation that survives political conflict, territorial disputes and social divisions.

The outrage in Mathura stems from precisely this understanding. Residents are not merely complaining about damage to land. They are expressing anguish over what they regard as the desecration of a sacred space and a violation of the dignity of their dead.

The controversy also raises important questions about how law understands compensation.

Compensation in law is often misunderstood as a mechanism for calculating the market value of a loss. In reality, courts routinely award compensation for injuries that are impossible to measure in economic terms. Constitutional courts have awarded compensation for custodial violence, illegal detention, police excesses, violations of fundamental rights, wrongful deaths, emotional suffering and infringements of human dignity.

In such cases, compensation does not place a literal price on liberty, dignity or human suffering. Rather, it serves a broader purpose. It acknowledges wrongdoing, recognises injury, affirms the dignity of the victim and signals the state’s acceptance of responsibility.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognised this principle. Beginning with landmark cases such as Rudul Sah v. State of Bihar, Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa and subsequent constitutional tort jurisprudence, Indian courts have held that monetary compensation may be awarded when fundamental rights are violated. Such compensation is not intended to erase the injury suffered. Instead, it functions as public recognition that a serious constitutional wrong has occurred.

Viewed through this lens, the Mathura episode appears particularly troubling.

The official response reportedly treated damaged graves within the same administrative framework used to calculate losses relating to fencing structures, landscaping and trees. Yet a grave is not municipal infrastructure. It is not an asset whose value can be determined through replacement cost. It is the resting place of a human being and occupies a unique position within constitutional, religious and social life.

The controversy therefore exposes the limitations of administrative approaches to certain forms of harm. Some injuries cannot be fully understood through accounting exercises because the injury itself lies not in the physical object damaged but in what that object represents.

The constitutional implications of the incident extend beyond compensation. Article 21 of the Constitution protects the right to life and personal liberty and has been interpreted by courts to include human dignity as one of its central components. Importantly, Indian courts have repeatedly recognised that dignity does not disappear at the moment of death.

Judicial decisions have acknowledged the importance of dignified burial, dignified cremation and respectful treatment of human remains. During the COVID-19 pandemic, courts across the country intervened repeatedly to ensure that even those who had died from infectious diseases were accorded respectful last rites. The underlying principle was clear: human dignity survives death. The treatment of the dead reflects the constitutional values of the living.

Seen from this perspective, the alleged disturbance of graves at the Ahl-e-Muslimeen Kabristan engages concerns that extend beyond municipal negligence. It raises questions about whether public authorities adequately recognised the nature of the harm involved. If the disturbance of graves implicates dignity, memory and religious identity, then reducing the injury to a compensation calculation risk obscuring the true nature of the wrong.

The controversy also engages questions of religious freedom. Burial practices are integral components of religious life. Cemeteries and graveyards are not ordinary public spaces but sacred sites through which communities discharge religious obligations, preserve ancestral connections and maintain collective memory. Their protection is therefore closely connected to the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom under Article 25.

This concern becomes particularly significant where the cemetery in question is a recognised waqf property. Waqf institutions occupy a protected legal status and are intended to preserve religious and charitable assets for the benefit of the community. The fact that the Ahl-e-Muslimeen Kabristan is a notified waqf property raises additional questions regarding the safeguards that existed to protect the site and the procedures followed before demolition work was undertaken.

The incident acquires further significance when viewed against the broader political and social context of Mathura. As The Wire notes, the district has witnessed continuing disputes concerning Muslim religious sites, waqf properties, demolition drives affecting Muslim localities, campaigns targeting Muslim-owned businesses and politically charged litigation surrounding the Shahi Idgah mosque. Local residents have also raised concerns regarding encroachments around the cemetery, the establishment of a garbage collection point near its entrance and previous attempts to alter the character of the land.

Whether these concerns are accepted or contested, they form the backdrop against which the graveyard controversy is being interpreted by the affected community.

This context matters because institutions do not operate in a vacuum. Administrative actions acquire social meaning through historical experience. For many local Muslims, the disturbance of graves does not appear as an isolated bureaucratic mistake. Rather, it is seen as part of a broader pattern in which Muslim spaces—homes, businesses, places of worship and now burial grounds—have increasingly become sites of contestation and intervention.

This is what transforms the story from an administrative controversy into a constitutional one. The issue is not merely whether a contractor made an error or whether compensation was eventually paid. The deeper concern is how institutions respond when sacred spaces belonging to a minority community are damaged. Do they treat the incident as a technical mistake requiring reimbursement, or as a serious violation demanding accountability, restoration and recognition of the injury inflicted?

The documents cited by The Wire establish a paper trail showing that authorities acknowledged the damage and directed compensation. But acknowledgment is not accountability. Compensation is not justice.

A cheque may close an administrative file, but it does not answer the central questions raised by the episode. Why was a legally recognised cemetery disturbed? Who authorised the operation? What safeguards existed to protect burial sites? Was the legal status of the cemetery verified beforehand? Were any officials held responsible? Will restoration measures be undertaken? And what remedies are available when the dignity of the dead is violated?

Until those questions are answered, the controversy surrounding the Ahl-e-Muslimeen Kabristan will continue to resonate far beyond the boundaries of a single graveyard. Ultimately, the most disturbing aspect of the Mathura incident may be the message that many residents believe it conveys. The issue is not simply that graves were damaged. It is that the destruction of a sacred burial ground appears to have been processed through the machinery of administration as though it were no different from a damaged fence or uprooted tree. In doing so, the state risks transforming a question of dignity into a question of accounting.

And that is why the controversy has become about far more than nine damaged graves. It forces a larger reckoning with how law, administration and public institutions understand harm itself. Some injuries can be compensated. Others can only be acknowledged. The disturbance of the dead belongs firmly in the latter category.

Related:

Constitutional ideals vs. public order: SC delivers split verdict on Christian burial rights, fails to confront structural discrimination

‘Can’t keep the pot boiling over dead bodies’: Supreme Court directs dignified cremation/burial of Manipur violence victims

Muslim group switches sect, Kerala HC upholds their rights to prayer and burial

Segregated burial grounds, a violation of the Constitution: Madras High Court

Christians not being allowed burials, forced to cremate in Mumbai?

In a Heartwarming Gesture, Hindu Family Donates Land for Muslim Burial Ground in Assam

The post When the State Valued a Desecrated Grave at Rs 100: The Mathura cemetery controversy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A key reason is the limited understanding among affected communities of the long-term implications of SIR. While the NRC was widely perceived as a direct threat to citizenship, the dangers posed by SIR have not been communicated with the same clarity. There is growing concern that individuals removed from electoral rolls through the SIR process could eventually face the erosion of citizenship rights, exclusion from government welfare schemes, and the weakening of constitutional protections. If such consequences begin to materialise, awareness and resistance among marginalised, Dalit, and oppressed communities are likely to intensify. As a result, the demand for the withdrawal of SIR may gather mass support only after the process has run its course, making it essential for people’s organisations to prepare for a longer and grittier struggle.

At the same time, certain assumptions circulating within sections of the movement deserve closer scrutiny. A widely held belief suggests that Karnataka can make SIR more people-friendly through administrative interventions and political will, particularly with the support of the Congress government. This expectation persists despite the fact that similar efforts have not succeeded in states such as West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, where opposition parties and grassroots organizations have mounted a far more sustained resistance.

Several proposals have emerged from within activist circles. These include conducting Gram Sabha-based verification of voter lists (social audit of the electoral rolls), preparing parallel voter registers, allowing Gram Sabha approval to substitute for missing documents, issuing residence certificates at the local level, digitizing available records, creating smart cards for residents, and extending the deadline for document submission by six months. Reported The Hindu.

Underlying these proposals is the hope that Karnataka can prevent the exclusion of any eligible voter from the electoral rolls. Activists have also warned that a larger agitation could follow if the Election Commission refuses to accommodate these demands.

Responding to public pressure, Congress leaders and the Chief Minister have repeatedly instructed party workers to ensure that no eligible voter is left out during the SIR exercise. Such statements have further strengthened the belief in some quarters that Karnataka may be able to overcome the dangers associated with SIR through state-level intervention.

The democratic spirit behind these demands is Unquestionable. Similar proposals have been endorsed by several scholars and former Election Commissioners who view them as part of a broader project of democratizing electoral administration.

The central issue, however, is not the democratic aspirations themselves. The question is whether these aspirations can actually be implemented within the legal framework governing SIR.

Here lies the fundamental contradiction. SIR, by its very design, appears to function in a manner that limits democratic oversight rather than expanding it. Even the modest mechanisms of public accountability that existed in earlier electoral processes seem increasingly inapplicable within the current framework.

This raises important questions about the constitutional character of SIR, the extent of authority available to state governments to intervene in the process, and the realistic prospects of protecting vulnerable communities from exclusion.

Demands for Gram Sabha oversight, smart cards, social audits, and community verification are undoubtedly democratic and desirable. Yet there is a danger in assuming that existing governments can simply implement these measures and thereby neutralise the exclusionary potential of SIR. Such expectations rest on the assumption that state governments possess meaningful authority over a process that is largely beyond their control.

That reality may help explain why states with stronger grassroots movements, more active civil societies, and comparatively responsive governments—including Kerala, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu—have been unable to introduce significant people-friendly modifications to the SIR process.

A serious engagement with SIR therefore requires moving beyond optimism, assumptions, and administrative wish lists. The challenge is to understand the process in its existing legal and political form and to develop strategies of resistance grounded in that reality rather than in expectations of accommodation.

SIR and the Constitutional Limits of State Governments

A recurring demand in the ongoing opposition to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process is that state governments should intervene to make voter verification more democratic and inclusive. Proposals such as Gram Sabha scrutiny of voter rolls, social audits, community verification mechanisms, and locally issued documentation have gained support among activists and sections of civil society.

These demands arise from legitimate democratic concerns. Yet a closer examination of the constitutional and legal framework governing electoral rolls raises an important question: do state governments actually possess the authority to introduce such measures within the current system?

The Constitution of India, through Articles 324 to 326, vests the superintendence, direction, control, and conduct of elections to Parliament and State Legislatures in the Election Commission of India (ECI). This arrangement has long been criticized for limiting democratic oversight and accountability. Nevertheless, until constitutional reforms alter this framework, it remains the governing reality.

Precisely because of these limitations, proposals such as Gram Sabha-based verification and social audits represent important democratic reforms that deserve serious consideration. The issue, however, is not whether such reforms are desirable, but whether state governments can legally implement them under the existing constitutional structure.

The answer appears to be clear. Without constitutional amendments or changes to the relevant laws governing elections, state governments do not possess the authority to introduce such reforms in the preparation of Assembly electoral rolls.

The need for a legislative reform on how state elections function may be read here. A year ago, Janaagraha found that only 34 of the State Election Commissions had the powers to undertake delimitation and reservation exercises, revealing that state commissions are unable to enforce independent timelines for the conduct of local elections. This study may be read here.

The legal basis for the current SIR exercise is found in Article 324 (1) of the Constitution, Sections 21 and 13CC of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and the relevant provisions of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.

Article 324(1) places the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of elections under the authority of the Election Commission of India.

Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 grants the Commission broad powers to undertake revisions of electoral rolls whenever it considers such action necessary. Electoral rolls prepared outside the Commission’s directions do not possess legal validity.

But the SIR process goes beyond a routine electoral revision and effectively operates as a form of citizenship verification and exclusion. Whether such an exercise falls within the Commission’s constitutional authority remains a matter of intense legal and political debate. However, Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality and the legal basis of this exclusionary SIR in its May 27, 2026 judgement.

Read Vote for Democracy and SabrangIndia’s special analysis of the verdict here.

Section 13CC further strengthens the Commission’s authority by placing all election officials, including Chief Electoral Officers of the states, under the control, superintendence, and disciplinary authority of the Election Commission while performing election-related functions. This is arguably against the intrinsic federal principals also vaguely enshrined in the Constitution, especially if the central ECI becomes a handmaiden or tool of the regime in power.

Read Vote for Democracy’s multi-lingual Timeline: From shielding Election Commissioners to restricting scrutiny of election documents, including video footage here.

As a result, the design, implementation, and operational guidelines governing SIR fall within the Commission’s jurisdiction. During the conduct of the exercise, state election machinery functions under the Commission’s authority rather than under the direct control of state governments.

Some activists have pointed to provisions contained in the Election Commission’s 2023 revision manual, which allow draft electoral rolls to be read out in Gram Sabhas during certain revision exercises. However, those provisions apply to the routine Intensive Revision -IR- categories of electoral roll revisions and not the exceptional and Special Intensive Revision-SIR which is envisaged to verify and exclude citizens and not just routine voter verification.

Read Citizens for Justice and Peace’s exclusive training manual for activists here and here.

The guidelines issued separately for SIR do not provide for Gram Sabha scrutiny. Consequently, any attempt by a state government to impose alternative procedures outside the Commission’s framework could potentially conflict with the legal obligations imposed on election officials under Section 13CC.

A distinction must also be drawn between the Election Commission of India and State Election Commissions. State Election Commissions conduct elections to local bodies and operate within a different constitutional framework. Their powers do not extend to the preparation of electoral rolls for Parliamentary and Assembly elections.

The recent SC judgement has made it mandatory even for the voter list prepared for the Local Body elections to pass the SIR test. Thus it has further reinforced the centralization of authority in matters linked to SIR. As a consequence, even the limited space available to state institutions appears increasingly constrained.

The broader implication is that unless constitutional reforms transfer greater authority over electoral roll preparation to states or create stronger mechanisms of local democratic oversight, state governments have little room to modify the framework established by the Election Commission.

This constitutional reality helps explain why states such as Kerala, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu—despite possessing strong opposition parties, an active citizenry, and robust grassroots movements—have been unable to implement many of the democratic safeguards demanded by activists.

Read SabrangIndia’s exclusive interrogation into numbers of exclusion of voters, state-wise, here.

Previous robust analyses by the Reporter’s Collective into the ongoing West Bengal SIR process, that revealed issues like a) how the Commission misled the Supreme Court, b) serious software glitches that facilitated mechanical exclusions, c) ECI’s authorisation of hand-picked personnel to supersede legally designated officers responsible for voter verification, d) rules changes without public notice and e) WhatsApp messages and oral commands complementing written regulations. These investigations may be read here, here, here and here.

The debate surrounding SIR is therefore not simply about the possibility of constitutional (read sympathetic) administrative interventions. It is also about the unchecked concentration of electoral authority within existing constitutional structures and the lack of constitutional mandate for the state governments to intervene. Unfortunately this authority has also been lent judicial affirmation.

Smart Cards and Residence Certificates are not SIR Documents

Recent statements by the Karnataka’s Congress leadership have highlighted efforts to address concerns surrounding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process. The Chief Minister has reportedly directed officials to expedite the issuance of Residence Certificates, while the newly-appointed KPCC president BK Hariprasad has urged the state government to adopt a people-centric approach in dealing with SIR-related issues.

The difficulty, however, lies in the distinction between a general residence certificate and the category of requirements of documents for a Permanent Residence Certificate (PRC) and recognised under the SIR framework.

Read an earlier caution on the issue here.

According to the criteria laid down by the Election Commission, the relevant requirement is not merely proof of current residence but proof of permanent residence through documents recognised under the prescribed verification process.

Experiences from other states especially West Bengal illustrate the limits of state-level intervention. In West Bengal, the Election Commission initially declined to accept even the permanent Domicile Certificates leave alone what was called as the arbitrary Residence Certificate! Only after sustained political opposition, public mobilisation, and legal challenges was the Commission persuaded to recognize Domicile certificates. Even then, their acceptance was made contingent upon specific procedures, verification requirements, and certification by competent authorities.

This precedent raises doubts about whether residence certificates issued through an expedited state-level process would automatically satisfy the Commission’s requirements. The authority to determine the validity and acceptability of documents remains with the Central Election Commission.

More over the recent May 2026 SC judgement has endorsed the constitutional authority and legal power of the Election Commission to prescribe documentary regime that it deems fit to satisfy eligibility criteria, discretion in determining timelines, documentary requirements, and verification procedures under SIR. This has significantly expanded the Commission’s unchecked autonomy while reducing opportunities for democratic oversight.

“Eleven Logical Discrepancies”: Illogical Criteria

One of the most controversial aspects of the process concerns the use of what are described as “logical discrepancy” tests. According to reports from earlier phases of implementation, these checks are intended to identify inconsistencies within submitted records and family-linkage claims.

When it was first introduced exclusively for the West Bengal SIR only four or five “discrepancies were listed. Now emboldened by the SC judgement the ECI has increased this exclusionary criteria 11 (“absurd”) discrepancies for the remaining states, despite facing strong independent criticisms on the four/five listed for West Bengal. Some of these criticisms may be read here and here.

The fresh list of logical discrepancies include:

1. More than six individuals claiming the same parents.
2. A parent-child age gap of less than fifteen years.
3. A parent-child age gap exceeding fifty years.
4. Less than nine months between the birth dates of siblings.
5. Differences in parental names between earlier and current records.
6. Age records that do not correspond logically across different electoral revisions.
7. Reliance solely on Aadhaar as supporting documentation.
8. A grandparent-grandchild age gap of less than forty years.
9. Mismatches in the father’s name across records.
10. Spelling variations in names.
11. Changes in the recorded relationship between individuals across different electoral records.

Supporters of SIR view such checks as tools for maintaining the integrity of electoral rolls. However, these criteria risk excluding large numbers of genuine voters because discrepancies in names, ages, and family records are common in official documents across India.

The broader concern is that each successive phase of implementation appears to introduce additional layers of scrutiny increase the likelihood of exclusion rather than inclusion, particularly among poor, marginalised, migrant, Dalit, Adivasi, and minority communities whose documentation histories are often incomplete or inconsistent.

Within this framework, proposals such as Gram Sabha certification, locally issued smart cards, or residence certificates face a fundamental obstacle. Unless the Election Commission formally recognises such documents, they do not automatically qualify as valid proof under SIR procedures.

A Second Freedom Struggle as the Only Way Forward?

In the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), the central issue is not merely the exclusion of voters from electoral rolls but the broader implications such exclusions may have for citizenship, constitutional rights, and democratic participation.

From this perspective, partial safeguards and administrative adjustments are unlikely to address the underlying problem, as has been proved in the 13 states where SIR has been completed. As long as SIR remains in force, concerns persist that millions of poor and marginalized citizens who lack complete documentary records may remain vulnerable to exclusion. Those possessing stronger documentation may be able to withstand the immediate impact, but the structural risks embedded in the process would remain unchanged.

This requires a political response of a much larger and more intense scale.

Calls are increasingly being made for a nationwide democratic mobilisation comparable in spirit to a second freedom struggle—one aimed not at colonial rule, but a new colonial interpretation of Citizenship. Hence the need of  defending constitutional democracy, civil liberties, and the rights of citizens against what is perceived as growing centralization of power.

Within this framework, opposition parties should move beyond rhetorical criticism and undertake forms of organised political resistance capable of confronting the Election Commission and the Union government directly. Extraordinary circumstances demand extraordinary measures and that routine electoral politics may be inadequate to meet the challenge.

But the willingness of mainstream opposition parties to pursue such a course is in doubt. The electoral calculations, competition for office, and institutional constraints have limited the capacity of opposition forces to mount a sustained challenge to the prevailing political order.

The result, in this view, is a widening gap between the scale of the perceived threat and the scale of the political response.

Attention therefore turns to the Indian citizenry, people’s organisations, social movements, trade unions, student groups, and ordinary citizens. The democratic resurgence must emerge through broader public mobilization “WE THE PEOPLE OF INDIA”

At the same time, significant obstacles remain. Although concerns about democracy, citizenship, and constitutional rights are growing, public awareness of the long-term implications of SIR remains uneven. Organisational capacity is fragmented, and the kind of nationwide movement required for a sustained democratic struggle has yet to take shape.

Karnataka is not unique in this regard. The limitations visible within the state’s anti-SIR movement reflect broader challenges facing democratic movements across the country. Dependence on political parties, particularly on ruling Congress party, and within existing institutions, has often weakened the autonomy, preparedness, and strategic clarity of people’s movements.

These tensions are increasingly evident in debates over the direction, goals, and methods of the anti-SIR campaign itself.

The democratic resurgence demand the complete withdrawal of SIR and the protection of democratic rights and the strategies for the same should be directed towards grass root democratic mobilisation and not a dependence on the half-willing or unwilling and impossible intervention of the ruling congress party in Karnataka.

The struggle over SIR is therefore is not an electoral issue, but as a test of the country’s democratic foundations. The choices made by political parties, civil society organizations, and citizens in the coming years may determine how that larger contest unfolds.

Related:

Anti-SIR Activists Beware: A mere Residential Certificate does not satisfy SIR requirements

Exclusive Investigation SIR: How many voters did the ECI actually disenfranchise? Why do final figures show inexplicable ‘additions’?

The Biopolitical Anatomy of Hindutva Fascism: Part II: SIR, EVMs and the Judiciary

The post To Karnataka’s Anti-SIR Movement: A note of caution and concern appeared first on SabrangIndia.

For generations, this has been the lifeline of Pani Sol.

Today, fear travels those roads alongside them.

On 9 June, one of the village’s hawkers, 50-year-old Akbar Ali Mondal, was allegedly beaten to death in Purulia district while earning a living. Yet the arrest of the accused has done little to calm nerves in Pani Sol, where thousands of families depend on hawking for survival.

A week after the killing, the village remains engulfed in anxiety. Men leave for work with apprehension. Families wait anxiously for phone calls. Conversations in tea stalls, village shops and courtyards inevitably return to the same unsettling question: could the next victim be one of us?

Pani Sol, located under Onda Police Station in Bankura district, is one of the largest villages in the region. Home to nearly 80,000 to 90,000 residents, around 90 per cent of whom are Muslims, the settlement is known across neighbouring districts as a village of hawkers, with generations of families relying on itinerant trade for their livelihood.

According to local residents, nearly seventy to eighty per cent of the village’s young men earn their livelihood through itinerant trading. Every day, they travel long distances carrying household goods, relying on personal relationships, trust and repeat customers to earn a living. Few families have agricultural land. Even fewer have access to stable salaried employment.

Akbar Ali Mondal was one of these workers.

How Akbar Ali’s Final Journey Shook a Village of Hawkers

Akbar worked in areas near the Purulia-Jharkhand border alongside his 24-year-old son, Zulfikar Ali. Although father and son operated in different localities, they followed the same routine. They would leave early in the morning and return home after a day of selling goods door to door.

On 9 June, they set out as usual.

By midday, Zulfikar received a phone call informing him that his father had fallen ill and had been taken to hospital. Rushing there, he found not an injured man awaiting treatment but the lifeless body of his father.

Showing photographs of the deceased, Zulfikar struggled to control his emotions.

“I still cannot understand why such brutality was inflicted upon him,” he said.

Akbar Ali Mondal’s killing has left behind more than grief. Akbar’s widow and young daughter depended heavily on his earnings. The family’s modest mud house stands as a reminder of how fragile their economic existence had always been. Now the responsibility of supporting the household rests entirely on Zulfikar.

Fear Spreads Through Bengal’s Village of Muslim Hawkers

While Akbar’s family mourns a personal loss, many residents of Pani Sol fear the killing signals something larger.

Many villagers believe Akbar Ali Mondal’s killing has transformed a livelihood concern into a question of survival. Residents allege that harassment of Muslim hawkers has increased in recent years in some areas where they work. Several claim that traders are sometimes subjected to intimidation and communal abuse.

Zulfikar alleged that Muslim hawkers were occasionally forced to chant religious slogans and threatened with exclusion from local markets and neighbourhoods.

“We have been working under fear for a long time,” he said. “Now that fear has become even greater.”

Whether or not all such allegations are established through official investigations, the perception of insecurity is now widespread across the village. In many homes, parents worry every time their sons leave for work.

The impact on the village economy is already visible. Several hawkers working in distant areas have reportedly returned home after Akbar Ali Mondal’s killing. Others say they are reconsidering where they travel and whether they can continue in the profession at all.

The dilemma is stark: stay home and face hunger, or continue working while fearing for one’s safety.

Why Pani Sol’s Economy Depends on Thousands of Hawkers

Beyond the killing, the deeper tragedy lies in the economic reality of Pani Sol.

A drive through the village reveals a settlement bustling with human activity but struggling with limited opportunities. Bicycles loaded with merchandise are as common here as tractors are in farming villages.

The village economy revolves around hawking because alternative employment opportunities scarcely exist.

Despite its large population, the village has only two high schools and fewer than ten primary schools. Residents complain of teacher shortages and poor educational infrastructure. Extreme poverty forces many children to abandon their studies before completing secondary education.

According to villagers, only a handful of residents have secured government jobs. The number of graduates in a population approaching one lakh is astonishingly small.

The consequence is visible everywhere. Each generation enters the same occupation as the previous one. Sons become hawkers because their fathers were hawkers.

Hawking is not merely a source of income in Pani Sol; it is the backbone of the village economy.

That is why Akbar Ali Mondal’s death has generated fear far beyond his immediate family.

Growing Fear After Attacks on Travelling Muslim Traders

Residents also recalled earlier incidents involving hawkers from the village. One local resident cited an alleged stabbing attack on another trader from Pani Sol a few months ago near Bankura town.

Whether isolated or part of a broader pattern, such incidents have reinforced feelings of vulnerability among villagers.

“Hawking once meant hardship,” said an elderly resident. “Now it also means fear.”

Rights Groups Step In as Family Seeks Justice and Support

Akbar Ali Mondal’s killing has attracted the attention of rights organisations and community groups.

A team from the Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR), led by social activist Omar Owais, visited the family and assured them of legal assistance. Representatives of Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind also met villagers and expressed concern over both the killing and the broader economic insecurity facing the community.

According to Owais, the family is living under tremendous psychological pressure and requires legal support to pursue the case, particularly because the crime occurred around 90 kilometres away in Purulia district.

For a family already struggling financially, travelling repeatedly to another district to follow legal proceedings presents a major burden.

“How Are We Supposed to Live?”

The question echoing across Pani Sol today is not only who killed Akbar Ali Mondal, but what comes next.

Akbar’s elder brother, Noor Mohammad Mondal, who survives by selling poultry, summed up the village’s predicament.

“Many hawkers are returning home because they are frightened,” he said. “But there is no other work here. Tell me, how are we supposed to survive?”

His question captures the anxiety of an entire village.

For decades, the roads of Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar provided a livelihood for Pani Sol’s residents. Today, those same roads have become a source of uncertainty.

As the investigation into Akbar Ali Mondal’s killing continues, thousands of hawkers from this village will once again leave home in search of customers. They will carry their goods as they always have.

But many will now carry something else as well: the fear that, for Muslim hawkers from Pani Sol, earning a living may itself have become dangerous.

Courtesy: https://enewsroom.in

The post After Akbar Ali Mondal’s Killing, Pani Sol’s Hawkers Ask: How Will We Survive? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

What has unfolded over the past week, between June 19 to June 21, 2026, is the culmination of years of unresolved worker grievances, mounting concerns about the privatisation of public transport, chronic underinvestment in the bus system, growing dependence on contractual labour, and a broader policy debate over whether Mumbai still treats affordable public transport as an essential public service.

The strike has therefore become a flashpoint where labour rights, commuter interests, public finance, urban planning and transport policy have collided.

Notably, the three-day indefinite strike by Mumbai’s BEST bus employees was called off late Sunday night following a meeting with Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. According to Hindustan Times, the decision to call off the strike was announced after the state government agreed to a monthly wage hike of ₹3,000 for permanent employees and ₹2,000 for contract workers, along with the release of pending gratuity payments from the current financial year’s budget. It also assured improvements in canteen and washroom facilities for employees.

Strike years in the making

The BEST Sanyukt Kamgar Kruti Samiti, a joint action committee representing all twelve major unions operating within the undertaking, is leading the agitation. The scale of participation itself is significant. Union representatives have claimed that workers across all 27 BEST depots have joined the movement, making it one of the most extensive industrial actions witnessed within the undertaking in recent years.

The immediate trigger may have been the failure of negotiations with the administration, but workers insist that the issues underlying the strike have accumulated over many years.

At the centre of their demands is the implementation of wage agreements that have remained unresolved despite prolonged negotiations. Union leaders have pointed out that wage settlements covering the period from 2016 onwards have not been fully implemented. Employees have also demanded the extension of benefits in line with the Seventh Pay Commission, arguing that workers of a public undertaking performing an essential service cannot be left behind while the cost of living in Mumbai continues to rise.

Equally significant are allegations that retired employees have been denied statutory dues for years. During the Dharavi protest that preceded the strike, union representatives stated that some retirees had not received payments due to them since 2022, forcing many into financial distress. Protesters also alleged that wait-listed workers continue to be denied even minimum wages despite performing essential functions within the undertaking.

As reported by The Indian Express, one of the unions’ principal demands is the implementation of wage agreements for the period 2016–2026 together with arrears and benefits in line with the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations. The unions have also repeatedly demanded that pending legal and statutory dues owed to retired employees be cleared in a lump sum.

Workers have also highlighted the plight of wait-listed and contractual employees who, according to the unions, continue to receive inadequate wages and lack the protections available to permanent staff. These concerns have been repeatedly raised over the years, but workers argue that little substantive action has followed.

For many employees, therefore, the strike is not simply a reaction to current conditions but a response to a long history of unmet commitments.

The Demand That Symbolises the Larger Conflict: Merger of BEST’s budget with the BMC

Among all the demands raised during the agitation, none has assumed greater symbolic importance than the call for the merger of BEST’s budget with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s principal budget. Workers argue that this issue has remained unresolved despite years of discussions and despite approvals and resolutions at various levels. According to employee representatives, the proposal was effectively accepted years ago but remains stalled within government processes. The significance of the demand extends beyond accounting arrangements.

For unions, according to India Today, the merger represents recognition that public transport is an essential civic service and should be funded as such. They argue that BEST cannot continue to be expected to operate on commercial principles while simultaneously fulfilling social obligations that private operators would never undertake.

This position has received support from commuter groups and transport activists who argue that the financial crisis confronting BEST stems from a fundamental policy contradiction: the city depends on BEST to provide affordable transport to millions, yet repeatedly expects the undertaking to function without the level of public investment necessary to sustain such a service.

The unfinished question of BEST’s finances

The financial debate surrounding BEST has become one of the most contentious aspects of the current dispute. According to transport activists, as per The Indian Express, the problem is not that public money is being spent on BEST. The problem is that it is being spent inconsistently and often through mechanisms that deepen rather than solve the undertaking’s financial difficulties.

Aamchi Mumbai Aamchi BEST has pointed out that between 2019 and 2025, the BMC provided more than ₹10,400 crore to BEST largely in the form of loans rather than direct subsidies. Critics argue that treating support to public transport as debt merely shifts the burden onto the undertaking while doing little to strengthen its long-term viability.

The organisation has also highlighted what it views as a stark disparity in public funding priorities. While rail-based transport systems receive substantial public support as an essential service, BEST buses—which carry lakhs of passengers daily and provide critical last-mile connectivity—have often been subjected to a very different financial approach. The result is a perpetual cycle of deficits, debt and austerity.

Mumbai needs 12,000 buses; it has less than a quarter of that number

Perhaps the most striking issue emerging from commuter groups concerns the sheer inadequacy of Mumbai’s bus fleet. According to Aamchi Mumbai Aamchi BEST, a city of Mumbai’s size requires approximately 12,000 buses to adequately serve its population. Yet the city currently operates fewer than 3,000 buses. This shortfall has profound consequences.

It translates into overcrowded buses, long queues at bus stops, reduced route coverage, longer waiting times, irregular services and increasing pressure on other forms of public transport.

For residents living far from railway corridors and metro stations, the consequences are particularly severe. Buses remain the most affordable and accessible form of public transport for students, senior citizens, women, persons with disabilities, hospital patients, informal workers and millions of lower-income commuters.

Transport activists argue that instead of expanding bus services in line with population growth, policy choices over the last decade have steadily reduced public transport capacity.

As a result, many commuters have been pushed towards more expensive transport options or private vehicles, further contributing to congestion and inequality in urban mobility.

The wet-lease experiment and the growing backlash

No issue better captures the broader ideological dispute surrounding BEST than the wet-lease model. Over the past decade, the undertaking increasingly shifted towards buses owned and operated by private contractors. According to The Indian Express, unions have pointed out that of the approximately 2,800 buses currently operating in the fleet, only a small fraction are directly owned by BEST. The overwhelming majority are operated through wet-lease arrangements involving private contractors.

When introduced, the model was promoted as a solution to financial constraints and operational inefficiencies. Workers, however, argue that the promised benefits have failed to materialise. According to the unions, outsourcing has not solved BEST’s structural financial problems. Instead, it has created a two-tier workforce in which contractual employees often work under more precarious conditions and with fewer protections than permanent staff.

The unions also contend that outsourcing has weakened accountability within the transport system while transferring public functions into private hands.

For many workers, the strike represents a rejection of a model they believe has steadily undermined the institution.

Safety concerns and the human cost of outsourcing

The criticism of the wet-lease system is not limited to labour rights. Commuter groups have linked the model to growing concerns regarding public safety. Aamchi Mumbai Aamchi BEST notes that between January 2023 and December 2025, BEST buses were reportedly involved in 958 major accidents resulting in 77 deaths and 217 injuries. The organisation argues that the pattern points to deeper systemic issues.

According to the memorandum, contract drivers often work under difficult conditions while private operators have incentives to minimise expenditure on maintenance and training. The group contends that these pressures create risks not only for employees but also for passengers and pedestrians.

The memorandum further recalls earlier concerns raised regarding operational defects in electric buses, including braking issues, delayed door closure systems and battery-related problems.

Whether every accident can be attributed to outsourcing remains contested. However, the scale of the figures has strengthened demands for a comprehensive review of the current model.

The fight over depots and public land

Another major fault line concerns the future of BEST’s depots. Workers and transport activists have expressed strong opposition to proposals involving redevelopment and monetisation of depot lands through public-private partnerships. Their concern is not merely ideological. They argue that depots are critical pieces of transport infrastructure. They serve as maintenance facilities, operational centres, charging stations, worker facilities and storage spaces necessary for running a large bus network.

Once such land is transferred or leased for commercial development, critics warn, rebuilding equivalent infrastructure in a densely populated city like Mumbai may become virtually impossible. Previous monetisation exercises have failed to deliver the financial turnaround that was promised. They point to outstanding recoveries from earlier redevelopment projects and argue that selling public assets generates only temporary revenue while leaving underlying operational problems unresolved. For them, public transport land should remain dedicated to public transport purposes.

Mumbai’s urban priorities

The dispute has also revived broader questions about how Mumbai allocates public resources. Activists, as per MoneyControl, argue that the city has invested heavily in infrastructure designed primarily to facilitate private vehicle movement while neglecting the needs of millions who depend on public transport.

They point to a decade of road infrastructure expansion, flyovers and large transport projects alongside a shrinking bus fleet and deteriorating bus services.

The result, they argue, is an inversion of priorities: enormous investments benefit private mobility while the most accessible form of transport for ordinary residents struggles for survival. For commuter groups, the BEST crisis therefore reflects larger choices about the kind of city Mumbai is becoming.

What workers and commuters are ultimately demanding?

Despite differences in emphasis, workers’ unions and commuter organisations are advancing remarkably similar demands.

They seek:

• Immediate payment of pending retirement benefits and statutory dues.
• Implementation of wage agreements and Seventh Pay Commission recommendations.
• Regularisation and protection of contractual workers.
• Merger of BEST’s budget with the BMC’s main budget.
• Stable public funding rather than debt-based support.
• Absorption of wet-lease workers.
• A major expansion of the city’s bus fleet.
• Reversal of policies that have reduced direct public ownership and operation of buses.
• Protection of depots and transport infrastructure from commercial redevelopment.
• Recognition of public transport as an essential public service deserving long-term public investment.

Opposition silent on Mumbai woes?

While citizens forums like Amchi Mumbai have been pro-active even as Unions have collectively brought attention to the deliberate crippling of BEST Undertaking once an international display for a working and extensive public transport system. The relative inactivity of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi, read Shiv Sena (Udhav Balasaheb Thackeray-UBT) with 65 corporators and the Indian National Congress (INC) with 15 was expected by Mumbaikars to support, with its own cadre, this issue. Instead, BEST employees and their unions have been forced to raise this issue in isolation!

A crisis that cannot be resolved through negotiation alone

The strike may eventually end through negotiations over wages, benefits and working conditions. However, the questions it has raised will remain. For years, workers have complained of unpaid dues and broken commitments. Commuter groups have warned that the city is systematically underinvesting in bus transport. Activists have questioned outsourcing, depot monetisation and shrinking public ownership. Yet many of these concerns have remained unresolved. The current confrontation has brought all of those issues into a single moment.

What is now at stake is not merely the settlement of an industrial dispute but the future direction of Mumbai’s public transport policy itself. The central question confronting the state government and the BMC is whether BEST will continue to be treated as a struggling enterprise expected to fend for itself, or whether it will be recognised and funded as what millions of Mumbaikars already know it to be: an indispensable public service and one of the city’s last remaining democratic forms of mobility.

Here is the BEST memorandum for view:

Related:

May-June 2026: Youth Congress nationwide protests challenge education system collapse under Modi government, media gives cold shoulder?

“₹4 a Kilo for a Crop That Costs ₹20 to Grow”: Nashik’s onion farmers erupt in protest over deepening price crisis

Noida Protest 2026: A labour uprising the state refused to understand

NSA slapped on journalist, DU scholar in Noida workers’ protest case amid allegations of crackdown on dissent

2025 in Protest: Across issues, across India

The post The BEST Strike: Years of unfulfilled promises, structural neglect and the future of public transport in Mumbai appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Cases emerging from Assam’s citizenship determination regime

The petitions arise from Assam’s unique citizenship adjudication framework, under which Foreigners Tribunals determine whether a person is an Indian citizen or a foreigner who entered the country after March 25, 1971, the cut-off date fixed under the Assam Accord.

Persons referred to these tribunals are required to establish their citizenship by proving linkage with ancestors whose presence in India can be traced to electoral rolls or other admissible records predating the cut-off date. Tribunal orders are challengeable before the Gauhati High Court and thereafter before the Supreme Court.

For years, rights groups such as Citizens for Justice and Peace have criticised the functioning of the tribunals, arguing that citizenship claims are frequently rejected on the basis of minor discrepancies in names, ages, spellings, or documentary inconsistencies that are common in rural records. Questions have also been raised regarding the treatment of illiterate and economically vulnerable persons who often struggle to navigate complex evidentiary requirements. The cases before the Supreme Court appear to bring many of these concerns into sharp focus.

Saleha Khatun: Citizenship claim rejected despite multiple lineage documents

One of the petitioners, Saleha Khatun, a 50-year-old illiterate woman, has been lodged in the Goalpara detention centre since March 2 after being declared a foreigner by a Foreigners Tribunal in Darrang district, a finding later affirmed by the Gauhati High Court.

According to her petition, reported by Livelaw, she had produced extensive documentary evidence to establish that she is the daughter of Indian citizens Ahsan Ali and the late Korpuljan, whose names appear in electoral records predating 1971 from Nagabandha village in Nagaon district.

Her evidence reportedly included NRC legacy records relating to her father, voter lists, certificates issued by the Gaonburah and Gram Panchayat authorities, family electoral records and oral testimony from her sister intended to establish lineage and continuity of residence.

Despite this, the Foreigners Tribunal rejected her claim in December 2018, citing discrepancies relating to family particulars, age and other collateral details. The Tribunal also declined to rely on linkage certificates because the authorities who issued those certificates had not been examined before it.

The case raises questions regarding the weight that should be accorded to documentary evidence when discrepancies are not directly connected to the core issue of citizenship. AoR Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi has filed the SLPs for this case.

The Supreme Court order may be viewed here:

Sarbhanu Begum: Spelling variations become grounds for rejection

The petition filed by Sarbhanu Begum presents another example of citizenship claims allegedly being defeated by inconsistencies in official records, according to LiveLaw. Sarbhanu, an illiterate domestic worker aged around 50 years and currently detained in Goalpara, contends that she is the daughter of the late Mia Hussain, whose name appears in pre-1971 electoral records from Barkur village in Darrang district.

According to her plea, she produced documentary evidence and independent witness testimony to establish both lineage and continued residence in Assam. However, the Tribunal reportedly rejected her claim primarily because of variations in the spelling of her name appearing as “Sarbhanu”, “Sorbhanu” and “Saharbhanu” in different records. An additional discrepancy concerning an electoral entry relating to her husband’s name was also relied upon against her.

Her petition raises a recurring issue that has appeared in numerous citizenship cases in Assam: whether spelling variations and clerical inconsistencies in documents prepared over several decades should be sufficient to discredit an otherwise supported claim of citizenship. AoR Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi has filed the SLPs for this case.

The Supreme Court order may be viewed here:

Nureza Begum: Challenge to ex-parte declaration

The case of Musstt Nureza Begum centres on allegations of procedural unfairness. Nureza Begum, as per LiveLaw, who describes herself as an illiterate woman living below the poverty line, contends that she was declared a foreigner through an ex parte proceeding.

According to her petition, after receiving notice from the Tribunal, she appeared before it and signed a register as instructed. Believing that she had complied with the process, she left the premises. She later discovered that the Tribunal had proceeded ex-parte and declared her a foreigner.

Her challenge before the Gauhati High Court was unsuccessful. The High Court held that once notice had been served, she could not avoid the consequences of failing to properly participate in the proceedings. The Court observed that the responsibility to defend the case rested upon her and concluded that judicial intervention could not be granted merely because she had been negligent.

The petition before the Supreme Court raises broader concerns regarding access to justice, particularly for illiterate litigants who may not fully understand legal procedures or the consequences of procedural defaults. AoR Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi has filed the SLPs for this case.

The Supreme Court order may be viewed here:

Basiram Nessa: Alleged non-consideration of documentary evidence

Basiram Nessa’s petition centres on allegations that crucial documentary evidence was ignored. As per LiveLaw, she claims to have produced electoral rolls from 1965 and 1989 containing the names of her grandfather and father respectively. She also relied upon certificates issued by local authorities certifying that she was the daughter of Zakir Hussain and had subsequently married Osman Gani.

According to her plea, the Tribunal nevertheless concluded that she had failed to establish her parental linkage and therefore failed to discharge the burden of proving citizenship. The matter has a long procedural history. Basiram previously approached the Supreme Court, which in January 2020 permitted her to seek review before the Gauhati High Court. However, those proceedings also failed to provide relief, leading her to once again approach the apex court.

Her case highlights concerns regarding judicial scrutiny of documentary records and the extent to which tribunals must expressly engage with evidence produced by persons facing the risk of detention and deportation. AoR Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi has filed the SLPs for this case.

The Supreme Court order may be viewed here:

Aklima Khatun: Citizenship claim questioned despite NRC and electoral records

The Supreme Court also issued notice in the case of Aklima Khatun and directed that status quo be maintained. Aklima was declared a foreigner on the allegation that she entered India after the statutory cut-off date of March 25, 1971. The finding was subsequently upheld by the Gauhati High Court, reported LiveLaw.

Her petition asserts that she relied upon NRC 1951 records relating to her parents, electoral rolls from 1966, 1970, 1985, 2006 and 2016, as well as her voter identity card demonstrating continued residence in Balarchar village of Bongaigaon district.

Despite these documents, the Tribunal allegedly relied upon discrepancies in the names of her grandparents to reject her claim. Advocate Ujjaini Chatterji appeared for this case.

The Supreme Court order may be viewed here:

The Supreme Court’s own warning against hyper-technical citizenship determinations

The present cases acquire added significance because they echo concerns that the Supreme Court itself has previously expressed about the manner in which citizenship claims are assessed in Assam. Several of the petitioners before the Court contend that their claims were rejected because of spelling variations, inconsistencies in family particulars, discrepancies in ages, or other defects in historical records, despite the production of legacy documents and electoral records intended to establish their Indian citizenship.

In this regard, the Supreme Court’s decision in Sirajul Hoque v. State of Assam assumes particular importance. In that case, the Court set aside a Foreigners Tribunal order that had treated spelling variations in ancestral names as fatal to the petitioner’s citizenship claim. The Court recognised that documentary records prepared across different decades, by different authorities and often in different languages, are naturally susceptible to variations in spelling, transliteration and clerical recording.

The judgment acknowledged a reality that has long characterised citizenship litigation in Assam: names appearing in electoral rolls, land records, NRC documents and village certificates frequently undergo changes in spelling when translated between Assamese, Bengali and English. Such variations, the Court indicated, cannot automatically be treated as evidence of foreign origin or as grounds to discard an otherwise credible claim of citizenship.

When documentary imperfections become grounds for exclusion

The allegations raised by the present petitioners appear to mirror precisely the concerns identified in Sirajul Hoque. Sarbhanu Begum’s citizenship claim, for instance, was reportedly rejected because her name appeared in different records as “Sarbhanu”, “Sorbhanu” and “Saharbhanu”, alongside a discrepancy relating to her husband’s name. Saleha Khatun’s claim was allegedly defeated by inconsistencies relating to family particulars and age, while Aklima Khatun’s case turned substantially on discrepancies in the names of her grandparents.

Viewed collectively, these cases raise questions about whether tribunals are giving disproportionate weight to clerical inconsistencies while overlooking the broader evidentiary record. Citizenship proceedings often involve individuals from rural and economically marginalised backgrounds whose records span several decades and have been generated by multiple authorities. In such circumstances, minor inconsistencies may be inevitable rather than indicative of fraud or foreign origin.

A question of evidentiary standards

The Supreme Court’s intervention therefore goes beyond the individual facts of the petitioners’ cases. At its core lies a broader legal question: what standard should govern the evaluation of citizenship claims in Assam? Should tribunals focus narrowly on isolated discrepancies, or should they assess documentary evidence holistically, considering whether the overall record establishes lineage and residence?

The reasoning in Sirajul Hoque suggests that citizenship determinations cannot be reduced to a mechanical comparison of names and spellings across decades-old records. Instead, tribunals must examine whether discrepancies are material enough to undermine the substance of the claim. Where multiple documents consistently point towards the same family lineage and place of residence, minor variations may not be sufficient to justify a declaration of foreignness.

Against this backdrop, the present batch of petitions may provide the Supreme Court with an opportunity to further clarify the evidentiary principles governing Foreigners Tribunal proceedings. The Court’s interim decision to stay deportation suggests a recognition that the issues raised warrant closer scrutiny before irreversible consequences such as detention and deportation are allowed to follow.

Detailed report on evolving jurisprudence on documentary evidence in Assam citizenship cases may be read here.

Related:

Gauhati HC upholds foreigner declaration, reasserts harsh reverse burden under colonial-era Foreigners Act

The Immigrant Expulsion from Assam Act, 1950: Re-evaluating executive powers in light of judicial pronouncements and due process

CJP Assam: A journey without parallel, evolving & expanding rights jurisprudence

Assam’s “Doubtful Citizens”: CJP secures justice for Anowara Khatun, declared Indian citizen after decades of state persecution

Dead Voters, Forged Forms, and Political Interference: CJP flags systemic manipulation in Assam’s electoral roll revision, seeks ECI probe

“Premier agency?” SC slams Assam Police for “appalling” two-year UAPA detention without chargesheet

Assam’s New SOP Hands Citizenship Decisions to Bureaucrats: Executive overreach or legal necessity?

The post Declared Foreigners, Facing Deportation: Supreme Court grants interim relief appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The statement states that the signatories have followed with concern Khurram Parvez’s detention on baseless charges since November 2021, and his continued detention without trial in Delhi’s Rohini Jail. By his birthday, June 18, he will have spent 1,670 days in prison.

The signatories have also reminded the Indian authorities that three years ago, in June 2023, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) determined that Khurram Parvez’s detention was arbitrary and called on the Indian authorities to release him. They have expressed concern that the Indian government, despite pledging to participate meaningfully with UN mechanisms as a member of the UN Human Rights Council, has not engaged with the UNWGAD in relation to Khurram’s detention.

Categorising his detention and judicial harassment is happening in a context of longstanding, ongoing grave violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Jammu & Kashmir, the signatories have also condemned the Indian authorities’ widespread and normalised use of repressive counter-terrorism laws, such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, under which Khurram Parvez is being targeted, to silence human rights defenders and dissenting voices.

The statement had urged the government of India to immediately and unconditionally release Khurram Parvez. It also calls on India’s international partners to publicly denounce Khurram Parvez’s detention and to demand that their Indian counterparts release him immediately and unconditionally. The solidarity with Khurram Parvez will continue.

Background

On June 10, 2026, in one of the cases that Parvez is facing, the Delhi High Court granted bail to Kashmiri rights defender Khurram Parvez after 4½ years in jail. Though significant, the ruling, however, did not immediately secure Parvez’s freedom. He is in continued judicial custody because he is also an accused in a separate NIA case registered in 2020 relating to alleged terror-funding networks in Jammu and Kashmir, where his bail plea remains pending. The June 10 ruling however is still key: a Division Bench of Justice Navin Chawla and Justice Ravinder Dudeja ruled that the constitutional guarantee of personal liberty under Article 21 cannot be indefinitely subordinated to statutory restrictions on bail. “The appellant’s rights under Article 21 of the Constitution of India need to be balanced and may even trump the restriction imposed under Section 43D(5) of the UAPA,” the Court observed, as per LiveLaw, while setting aside a December 2024 order of the Special NIA Court that had refused bail.

SabrangIndia had reported extensively on this ruling and the article may be read here.

The signature campaign cum statement released on June 19, the day after Khurram Parvez’s 49^th birthday had the following signatories:

Signed by:

Organisations:

1. ACAT-France
2. Activate Rights
3. Al-Haq
4. Amnesty International
5. Armanshahr / OPEN ASIA
6. Asia Alliance Against Torture (A3T)
7. Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates (AHRLA)
8. Asia Justice and Rights
9. Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD)
10. Asian Human Rights Commission
11. Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de España (APDHE)
12. Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc (ADFM)
13. Association for Democracy in the Maldives (ADM)
14. Association of Women for Awareness and Motivation (AWAM)
15. Association Tchadienne pour la Promotion et la défense des droits de l’homme (ATPDH)
16. Bridging for Sustainable Development (BSD)
17. Bytes For All, Pakistan
18. Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR)
19. Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC)
20. CENIDH
21. Center for Civil Liberties
22. Center for Prisoners’ Rights
23. Centro de Investigación y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos (CIPRODEH)
24. Centro de Políticas Públicas y Derechos Humanos (Perú EQUIDAD)
25. CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
26. Civil Society and Human Rights Network (CSHRN)
27. Collectif de Sauvegarde de la Ligue Algérienne pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme
28. Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS)
29. Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) (Northern ireland)
30. Community Self Reliance Centre (CSRC)
31. Defence of Human Rights Pakistan
32. DITSHWANELO – The Botswana Centre for Human Rights
33. Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO)
34. Forum Against Repression, Telangana
35. FORUM-ASIA
36. Foundation Day of the Endangered Lawyer
37. Front Line Defenders (FLD)
38. Hindus for Human Rights
39. Hivos
40. Human Rights Association (IHD)
41. Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)
42. Human Rights Defenders’ Alert – India (HRDA)
43. Human Rights Forum
44. Human Rights Online Philippines (HRonlinePH)
45. Human Rights Watch
46. IMPARSIAL, the Indonesian Human Rights Monitor
47. India Labour Solidarity (UK)
48. Indian Alliance Paris (IAP)
49. Indian Social Action Forum
50. International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
51. International Legal Initiative Public Foundation
52. International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
53. International Solidarity with Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India)
54. Just Peace Advocates/Mouvement Pour Une Paix Juste
55. Justiça Global
56. Karapatan
57. Kashmir Law and Justice Project
58. Kazakhstan International Bureau for human rights
59. Kirithavar Vazhvurimai Iyakkam (Christian Rights Forum – India)
60. Lawyers for Human Rights (South Africa)
61. League for Defence of Human Rights in Iran (LDDHI)
62. Liga Voor Mensenrechten
63. Liga voor de Rechten van de Mens
64. Ligue Burundaise des droits de l’homme Iteka
65. Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (LDH – France)
66. Ligue Djiboutienne des Droits Humain (LDDH)
67. Madaripur Legal Aid Association (MLAA)
68. Maldivian Democracy Network (MDN)
69. National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)
70. Nonviolence International
71. Odhikar
72. Organisation Marocaine des droits humains (OMDH)
73. People’s Watch
74. Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA)
75. Progressive Voice (PV)
76. Project South
77. Public Association “Dignity”
78. Public Committee against Torture in Israel
79. Rafto Foundation for Human Rights
80. Rencontre Africaine pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme (RADDHO)
81. Solidarite Fanm Ayisyèn (SOFA)
82. South Asia Justice Campaign
83. South Asia Solidarity Group
84. South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR)
85. SUARAM
86. Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP)
87. The Advocates for Human Rights
88. The Canadian BDS Coalition and International BDS Allies
89. The Sudanese Human Rights Monitor (SHRM)
90. Think Centre
91. University of Madras, Criminology Students
92. World Organization against Torture (OMCT), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders

Individuals:

1. Kulandaisamy
2. Ahmed Aloui
3. Aissa Rahmoune
4. Alexis Deswaef (President of FIDH)
5. Allarassem Yemingar
6. Angana Chatterji
7. Appandairaj Jain
8. Asiya Arif
9. Ather Zia
10. Bela Bhatia
11. Bernadette Hamenyimana
12. Cecille Baello (Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearance (FIND))
13. Cedric Prakash
14. Clifton D’ Rozario
15. David Kaye (former UN Special Rapporteur)
16. Dean Accardi
17. Dhayanithi Raj Jeganathan
18. Diana Alzeer
19. Dr Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan
20. Frazer Mascarenhas
21. Emma Brännlund (Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Mid Sweden University)
22. Farhatullah Babar
23. Fatima Babu
24. Fernand de Varennes (former UN Special Rapporteur)
25. Fionnuala Ni Aolain (former UN Special Rapporteur)
26. Alex Maria Chelliah (OFM Cap)
27. Freny Manecksha
28. Giulia Ganovelli
29. Hafidha Chekir
30. Haley Duschinski
31. Hariprasath V
32. Harsh Mander
33. Immanuel Kalaiselvan
34. Johanna Chardonnieras
35. Joseph Xavier
36. Karan Singha
37. Khadija Errebah
38. Krishnakant Chauhan
39. Kumar Prashant
40. Lotika Singha
41. Mamadou Sy
42. Maryse Artiguelong (former FIDH Vice President)
43. Mody Watt (General Secretary, ONDH/ Sénégal)
44. Mona Bhan
45. Namdev Dagam
46. Nandita Narain
47. Navsharan Singh
48. Oli D’Cruz
49. Omer Aijazi
50. R Shameer Basha
51. Rajeev Singha
52. Rajni Shah
53. Rakshith M R
54. Raqib Naik
55. Ruki Fernando
56. Saba Ismail
57. Sam Kamalesan
58. Shahindha Ismail
59. Sherley Dokiburra
60. Shyama Sivadas
61. Siddeeqa Iram
62. Sidharth Tulsi Ganeshan
63. Siraj Dutta
64. Somasekhara sarma
65. Sruti Bala
66. Stephen J. Rapp
67. Suchitra Vijayan
68. Sudarshan Ramiengar
69. Suresh Babu Marayil
70. Suresh M
71. Théobald Rutihunza
72. Vasantha Lakshmi
73. Vijay S P
74. M
75. Vivek Sundara
76. VS Krishna
77. Yoojung Hong
78. Zainab Jamil
79. Zia Ur Rehman
80. Zohra Yusuf

The statement may also be read here.

Related:

Article 21 May Trump UAPA Bail Bar: Delhi High Court grants bail to Kashmiri rights defender Khurram Parvez after 4½ years in jail

UAPA: Delhi HC grants Bail to Kashmiri activist Khurram Parvez after close to 5 years in alleged terror funding case

50 HR groups appeal for unconditional release of Khurram Parvez, Irfan Meraj

The post Release Kashmiri HRD Khurram Pervez immediately & unconditionally: International HR Fora appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In January 2026, CJP had documented in detail this phenomenon, a report that had been used widely in the public interest litigation that resulted in the May 2026 judgement. That detailed exploration may be read here. In all the documented cases, the photos and videos of accused were shot and shared on social media to embarrass them further. In essence, the police started a social trial against the accused and violated their dignity.

Defining public shaming could be a tricky task as it manifests itself in various forms. It could be through sharing photos online, parading in public, making accused do undignified acts, or simply—by publicly flogging the accused. However, the essence of the act remains, i.e., humiliating or punishing the accused in a manner that in the eyes of society they turn into criminals before the Court pronounces them to be so.

Public shaming does not refer to a single act of physical or mental torture but instead is a broader term wherein the accused is ridiculed (by being publicly paraded, or by having their degrading photos shared online), beaten up, and socially becomes a criminal before the trial ends (in most cases, before the trial even starts). It can be construed to be an umbrella term for violent offences that police inflict upon accused publicly.

Public shaming by police has been on the rise in the last few years. In the recognition of this rise, one has to see who has been affected by such incidents the most. Unsurprisingly, it is Muslims and Dalits, who are at the short end of the stick. As per a report tiled “Status of Policing in India Report 2025” published by Common Cause India and Lokniti empirically shows that more often than not the victims of police brutality have been from these marginalised communities. The specific act of public shaming is not any different, a perusal of the petitioners in all the cases that are analysed below makes it abundantly clear that public shaming by police unfairly affects the already marginalised. Ergo, the matter of Public Shaming has to be understood as a manifestation of State Violence as an instrument to marginalise. By perpetuating a form of violence that induces shame in the victim and ridicule in the observer, the State is further marginalising the already marginalised. Therefore, Public Shaming by police is clearly part of the phenomenon, State sanctioned violence against the minorities.

The act of public shaming is fundamentally Kafkaesque. Kafka in his famous short story In the penal colony talks about a society where accused’s body is inscribed with the alleged offence using needles. This act is carried out by a commander who happens to be the police, the judge and the executioner. The various instances of public shaming as happening in India are the similar if not the same. The police usurp the role of the judge and violates the dignity of an accused by beating and shaming them publicly. It contravenes inter alia, doctrine separation of powers and fundamental rights of the individuals—the salient features of a constitutional democracy.

In fact, in hitherto settled Indian criminal law jurisprudence, even convicts who have been convicted of serious offences are accorded –or should be accorded at least—fair if not humane treatment.

In the face of increase in public shaming by the police in Rajasthan (a detailed report on such incidents can be found here) the State’s High Court in the 2025 Islam Khan judgement laid down several guidelines that have to be followed by the police to curb such instances. It further held the act of public shaming to be violative of the fundamental right to privacy.

This primer will first breakdown the recent, year-old Rajasthan High Court judgement (Islam Khan and Others v. State of Rajasthan and Others) and analyse various aspects of it, including the final guidelines that were pronounced.

The second half of the primer shall deal with other judicial decisions pronounced by other constitutional courts, that is several other HCs and also the Supreme Court.

Lastly, we will attempt to demonstrate that there is an inconsistency in how courts have adjudged this issue. Considering the legal, social and psychological ramifications of public shaming, there is clearly a need for a sounder legal framework that can mitigate such occurrences. 

2025: Islam Khan and Others v. State of Rajasthan and Others

On the face of increase in acts of public shaming in Rajasthan (read a report on such incidents here), the High Court delivered a comprehensive judgement that laid down certain guidelines with the aim of stifling the practice. In the instance under examination here, the police had arrested the accused, degraded and humiliated them. Their photos and videos were shot and shared on social media. The judicial pronouncement came in response to this.

The judgement does a commendable job in grounding the prohibition of public shaming in three distinct constitutional features—doctrine of separation of powers, presumption of innocence, and respect of individual dignity. On the aspect of separation of powers, the Court starts with emphasising that the rule of law cannot be maintained without a functional separation of power. The invocation of this doctrine is important and novel, for it tacitly collapses the difference between a convict as per the court and a convict as per the media trial instigated by the police. The Court defines such a media trial engineered by the police to be “…a State-engineered narrative, wherein the police machinery, through press conferences, orchestrated disclosures, circulation of photographs, and at times even staged representations of arrest, seeks to project an accused person as culpable even before the due process of law has had an opportunity to unfold” (Paragraph 14)

The Judgement further reads, “Any transgression by the police into the judicial sphere, whether by declaring an accused guilty in the public domain, conducting actions that prejudice a fair trial, or exercising powers not sanctioned by law, would not only be without jurisdiction but would also strike at the very heart of due process” (Paragraph 13.2)

The Court by holding that media trial by police disturbs the constitutional doctrine of the separation of powers, implicitly held that media trial’s declaration of an accused as guilty is equally socially isolating and harmful as that of a court trial’s declaration, i.e., the mental or psychological effect is similar. Regardless of what the trial later proves, the accused in the eyes of the society becomes a criminal because of police actions that portrays them as convicts–or worse, sub-humans. The Court pegged the police action to its constitutional mandate of administrating law, not pronouncing guilt. The Court’s holding that merely showing an accused to be guilty amounts to a usurpation of judicial duties is crucial: in the context of public shaming particularly so; because the Police has repeatedly portrayed “accused” to be criminals in the eyes of the public. Such unprofessional, often partisan police conduct reduces public confidence in both the Police and Courts, eventually.

Making a logical extension of the aforesaid argument –separation of powers, the Rajasthan High Court went further to hold that criminal declarations vis a vis the accused by the police impacts the cardinal principle of presumption of innocence (until proven guilty). Media trials by the police displace the concept of presumption of innocence and whip up public prejudice and anger. Punishment precedes the conviction, and completely displaces the presumption of innocence.

Last not least, the force of this judgement lies in its assertion that the act of public shaming is a violation of human dignity. The Court recognises that acts of public shaming are ipso facto in contravention of human dignity. Dignity is the cornerstone of human rights. This is how dignity is acknowledged as a manifestation of human rights. The Preamble of the Constitution contains a solemn promise to secure the dignity of the individual as its framers were aware that the Constitution is an outcome of a long arduous struggle, which must value the dignity of an individual, independent of his social status.

The Court here grounded the inappropriateness of public shaming not just in Article 21 of the Constitution, but went a step further in the right direction, and held it to be violative of dignity itself. The effect of such a finding is that no law, circumstance, judicial pronouncement (that are often marred with legal hula-hoops to justify abhorrent actions) can justify public shaming by police. Its very existence is held to be impermissible. This is a crucial finding by a constitutional court.

However, it is the guidelines that the judgement lays down that sets it apart and hence its import. These guidelines are aimed to restrict if not stop public shaming from happening.  It is the first judicial pronouncement that explicitly lays down directions that ought to be followed by the police in the context of public shaming specifically. The guidelines require every police officer to follow the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) prescribed by the authorities. It further emphasises that no arrestee shall be subject to misbehaviour, mishandling, manhandling, harassment, or any form of coercion under any circumstances.

Crucially, the Court held in these guidelines that “any act of social media condemnation orchestrated or facilitated by police authorities, which results in public humiliation of an individual, shall be construed as a form of punishment” (Paragraph 18[iii]).

By construing public shaming as a form of punishment itself, the Court effectively made sure that no police officer can engage in the same because it would contravene both presumption of innocence (as it would lead to punishing before conviction) and doctrine of separation of power (as it would lead to police usurping the judges’ roles of sentencing a punishment).

While the judgement— specifically the guidelines, prima facie, lay down what appears to be an effective deterrent to public shaming, a closer look at it reveals no concrete steps—an absence of enforceability. A logical extension to the guidelines could have been a) compensation for the accused subject to such acts; b) institutional correction and actions against offending police officers and c) any other.

Post May 2025, less than a month after the Islam Khan judgement, the Rajasthan High Court was again asked to adjudicate on an incident of public shaming by police (Puranmal vs State of Rajasthan and Ors.). The accused was arrested, and before producing him before the competent Court, the police forcibly shaved his head, dressed him in women’s clothes, and paraded him through a crowded market, while photographs and videos of the incident were circulated on social media and news channels. Unfortunately, unlike in the case of Islam Khan findings in the Puranmal judgement were diluted. The same court that had the benefit of the guidelines laid down in Islam Khan, (both were single judge benches), the Court in Parunmal held that police’s promise of not repeating such incidents hereinafter, is sufficient. No action was taken. Even in the previous Islam Khan, despite laying such guidelines, the Court had merely asked the police to remove the videos where the accused is degraded from Social Media sites and other platforms. No proceeding was started against the police. Therefore, while the guidelines are welcome, their effectiveness remain in question.

Similarly, various High Courts and Supreme Court over the years have given different judgements on the same issue of public shaming.

Other Judicial Responses to Public Shaming

The case of public shaming was also discussed by the Supreme Court in its 2012 judgement of Dr. Mehmood Nayyar Azam Vs. State of Chattisgarh and Ors. The Court was called to decide whether compensation should be granted to a victim of such public shaming, the Court held in affirmative and made a distinction between defamation and public shaming.

The Court held that public shaming is distinct from defamation, public shaming causes mental and physical agony. The Court added that “[because of public shaming] the hurt develops a sense of insecurity, helplessness and his self- respect gets gradually atrophied” (Paragraph 40).

Further, the Court held that, “The payment of compensation in such cases is not to be understood, as it is generally understood in a civil action for damages under the private law but in the broader sense of providing relief by an order of making ‘monetary amends’ under the public law for the wrong done due to breach of public duty, by not protecting the fundamental rights of the citizen. The compensation is in the nature of ‘exemplary damages’ awarded against the wrongdoer for the breach of its public law duty and is independent of the rights available to the aggrieved party to claim compensation under the private law in an action based on tort, through a suit instituted in a court of competent jurisdiction or/and prosecute the offender under the penal law” (Paragraph 43)

Later, in In-Re Banners Placed On Road Side In The City Of Lucknow (2020), the Allahabad High Court took suo moto action against the banners placed by the UP Police on the streets of Lucknow which contained several individuals’ photographs, name and address. The context is/was the the Uttar Pradesh government’s controversial “name and shame” billboards that had publicly displayed the names, photographs, and residential addresses of individuals accused of vandalism during the anti-CAA protests in December 2019. The administration demanded compensation for public property damages, threatening to seize assets if unpaid!. The Allahabad High Court had, in a judgement, strongly condemned the actions, ordered the removal of all banners that ‘named and shamed’ holding that these acts were a violation of privacy; when the matter was carried to the Supreme Court of India, the court without staying the HC’s finding referred the matter to a constitutional bench. A report may be read here. Clearly, however this judicial rap means little to the UP state administration that had in December 2024 revived this practice that was condemned by the Allahabad HC in 2020 and which, moreover targets privacy and due process. During the violence in Sambhal in western UP, incited because of the controversial attacks on the Shahi Jama Masjid there, the administration had publicly named and shamed over 400 so-called accused! A report may be read here.

In another ruling delivered in January 2021, the Allahabad High Court condemned the act of displaying a list of so-called ‘top criminals at different police stations in various districts of UP (Jeeshan and Ors. Vs. State of U.P. and Ors.) The Court not only took a dignitarian approach and condemned the State authorities, but also granted compensation for the violation of public shaming. Moreover the Court directed all the Police stations to remove the list, and warned them that if such action is repeated, criminal proceedings and monetary compensation shall follow.

The matter of public shaming has been dealt by Gujarat High Court differently.

In the case of Bhautik Vijaybhai Bhatt Vs Director General Of Police & Ors. (the case involved a bunch of instances of public shaming) in 2019, the Court deferred to the powers of the executive. The Court further held that since departmental actions for the offence had been already initiated by the higher authorities against the police officers, this was a sufficient remedy. As opposed to such a deferential attitude, the same court in the 2023, Jahirmiya Rehamumiya Malek Vs State of Gujarat judgement, held the officers in contempt. In this case, police officers had arrested the accused, tied them to a public pole and beaten them up. Recordings of these offences by the police were uploaded on social media sites. The Court held that such arrest was a violation of the DK Basu judgement (1997), and as the police officers violated Supreme Court guidelines, they ought to be held in contempt

The Madhya Pradesh High Court took a unique approach altogether. In the case of Sangram Singh Rajoot v. State of Madhya Pradesh, the petitioners were forced to walk from police station to Court on foot. The Court held that this act cannot be considered ipso facto, an act of public shaming. The Court gave a wide margin of deference to the police when it instructed the same authority (police) to “internally inquire” about the incident and find if “malice” can be attributed to the police officers! The Court observed that the representations submitted by the accused indicated that a grievance was raised before the authorities, mere non-action on such representations would not automatically warrant issuance of a writ of mandamus for initiating disciplinary proceedings, unless a prima facie case of misconduct is established. The Court delegated all its duties to the executive and did not even issue a writ of mandamus honouring the higher judiciary’s role in checking misuse of power and authority by the executive/administration.

A perusal of this catena of judgements around public shaming from 2012 (SC) to 2025-26, we observe no consistent discernable pattern. While constitutional courts have, in recent times, in some states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and even some orders from Gujarat, held the act of public shaming to be condemnable and directed corrective measures, social sanction for such shaming persists. The phenomenon of social media and its intrusive, sometimes unregulated character adds more complex dimensions. There appears a greater imperative on the Court, to intervene not just clearly but swiftly to restore the balance —in favour of the Rule of Law.

Conclusion

The foregoing analysis makes it evident that the practice of public shaming by the police is no more an aberration but has increasingly become a baton wielded by an overarching, often authoritarian and unaccountable executive. ‘Elected governments’ are choosing to use this as a  systemic feature of India’s law enforcement architecture. The legal, social, and psychological harms it engenders are profound, recurring, and largely unaddressed.

Decades ago, when such practices certainly existed but were considered an aberration not the norm[1], did the Courts rule more assertively? The Supreme Court in Prem Shankar Shukla v. Delhi Administration (1980) was categorical in holding that handcuffing is prima facie inhuman, unreasonable, over-harsh, and arbitrary, and to inflict irons without fair procedure is to resort to zoological strategies repugnant to Article 21. The Court’s ruling was clear that freedom from handcuffs during transit between the prison and the court must be the rule and not the exception. Public shaming, in its various forms, is a direct descendant of the very practice Prem Shankar Shukla condemned. The DK Basu guidelines (1997) compounded this protection by laying down that custodial violence including torture and physical assault infringes Article 21, and that interrogation, though essential, must be conducted on scientific and humane principles, with third-degree methods being totally impermissible.

Yet, as the analysis of the Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh cases demonstrates, these guidelines are honoured more in their breach than in their observance. What the Prem Shankar Shukla and DK Basu guidelines could not anticipate was the peculiar, performative nature of public shaming in the age of social media, where the degradation of an accused: these acts are not merely incidental to an arrest but are part and parcel of the deliberate and orchestrated objective of the police action itself.

The social and psychological ramifications of this practice are equally severe, and they do not resolve themselves once the accused is acquitted. The Supreme Court in Dr. Mehmood Nayyar Azam observed that because of public shaming, the individual “develops a sense of insecurity, helplessness and his self-respect gets gradually atrophied.” Public humiliation, particularly when state-orchestrated and digitally disseminated, produces lasting trauma. The accused is no longer merely a person under trial. In the eyes of his community, employer, and family, he has been declared a criminal. His social reintegration becomes near impossible, irrespective of what the trial later concludes. The damage is therefore permanent, and the law currently has no instrument to make the victim whole. Monetary compensation, while progressive, cannot undo the viral spread of a degrading video.

The empirical picture is no less alarming. The incidents are not isolated and they are increasing. In Rajasthan alone, police officers in Sikar, Udaipur, Nagaur, Jhunjhunu, and Dausa have repeatedly forced accused men into women’s clothing, half-shaved their heads, and paraded them before crowds, with these unlawful acts being visually documented through 2025. The problem is not geographically contained. In Jammu, within a single month in 2025, there were at least two widely reported incidents of public shaming, one involving a theft accused being made to sit on the bonnet of a moving police vehicle with his hands tied and shoes garlanded around his neck, and another involving three men being publicly thrashed by police personnel after arrest, reigniting debate over the increasing tendency of law enforcement to resort to performative justice. The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that a group of advocates in Jammu lodged a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission alleging that law enforcement authorities are bypassing constitutional safeguards and replacing lawful investigation procedures with performative public punishment, leading to irreversible damage to the dignity and fundamental rights of the accused.

In light of all of this, the conclusion is inescapable. Indian criminal jurisprudence (analysed above related to Islam Khan 2025 and other verdicts) needs to be widely discussed, even as citizens, civil rights groups and the media discuss and deliberate on the serious ramifications of this deliberate executive-police fracture and capture of the ‘Rule of Law.’ What are the steps that need to be taken so we return the debate to conduct accountability by the Indian Police?

Is then what is needed is a centralised statutory or Supreme Court-mandated framework that defines public shaming exhaustively, prescribes mandatory consequences for violations including automatic contempt proceedings and compensation, and places a structural obligation on States to train and supervise their police forces accordingly? Without such a framework, the courts will continue to pronounce guidelines that are ignored, and the accused will continue to be paraded, shamed, and broken, long before any verdict is returned.

Relevant Judgements

[1] The 1979-1980 “Bhagalpur blindings” refer to a horrific series of human rights abuses in Bihar, India—when the Police deliberately blinded 31 undertrial and convicted prisoners by puncturing their eyes with needles and pouring acid into the sockets

(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this resource has been worked on by Hamzah Patel)

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