On May 5, 2025, the Rajasthan High Court delivered its judgement on the case titled Islam Khan and Others v. State of Rajasthan and Others. The judgement was in response to the petition alleging the police of public shaming of accused. This petition had challenged, in great detail, the conduct of the police on more than one occasion, wherein, the police had arrested accused, degraded and humiliated them by making them sit in undignified spots.
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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