By Sandeep Pandey and Shashank Singh
On 7 October, 2026, a bench of Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Achal Sachdev of Allahabad High Court remarked that police’s condition in Uttar Pradesh is a mess and that the officers think they can do anything and get away with it. Hearing the habeas corpus petition of one Deepak, the Court told the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Gautam Buddha Nagar and Station House Officer that they should be ashamed of having issued a notice to the accused under section 130 of Bhartiya Nagrik Suraksha Samhita when the accused was already in police custody and subsequently shown arrested after registration of a FIR. Hence an illegal arrest was sought to be legitimized by a subsequent remand order.
On 1 October, 2026, a Supreme Court bench of Justice Sanjay Kumar and Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva castigated the U.P. police in a case in which a FIR was registered against a motor-cycle rider who was caught on the spot, yet the FIR was registered in the name of unknown person. The Court commented that the police seems to have an agenda and enquired how will people trust the police if they proceed in this manner? The Court even went to the extent of saying that U.P. police should be disbanded and all investigations should be handed over to Central Bureau of Investigation. The Circle Officer of Khurja, Bulandshahar Shobhit Kumar was asked to remain present on the next hearing date and explain the circumstances of filing of the FIR.
On the same day a bench of U.P. High Court comprising of Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Divesh Chandra Samant observed that detention of a family member of an accused to put pressure on the accused to surrender is tantamount to unlawful deprivation of liberty of the family member and awarded a compensation of Rs. 40,000 to the family member to be recovered from the salaries of the police personnel responsible for illegal detention. A man was held for four days in a Prayagraj police station to force his brother, an accused in an attempt to murder case, to surrender. The Judges also said that their displeasure should be noted in the service records of concerned police personnel.
On 8 September, in the case of Akriti Chaudhary, a Delhi University law student against whom National Security Act was invoked in connection with her role in workers’ protest demanding better wages in April this year in NOIDA, a High Court Allahabad bench comprising of Justice Atul Sreedharan and Achal Sachdev termed the action despotic conduct by errant bureaucracy which could reduce U.P. to Orwellian Dystopia, while revoking the NSA and imposing a fine to Rs. 5 lakhs to be recovered from the salary of DM of Gautam Buddha Nagar, Medha Roopam, holding her guilty of lack of application of mind and violating her oath of allegiance, and other officers right down to SHO. The Court also said its displeasure was to be noted in the service records of responsible officers. Later on 23 September, SC stayed the fine imposed on officers but upheld the quashing of NSA.
On 29 September a Supreme Court bench of Justice Dipankar Dutta and Sheel Nagu quashed NSA used to keep businessman Mulla Afroz incarcerated after he had got bail from High Court in six FIRs filed against him for Sambhal violence of November 2024, of which he was described as the mastermind, related to the court ordered survey of Shahi Jama Masjid. The court disallowed an extra-judicial confession extracted from Mulla Afroz while in police custody to invoke NSA against him on 13 October, 2025, 34 days after he had got a bail in one of the primary cases related to Sambhal violence. The Court ordered a compensation of Rs. 10 lakhs to Mulla Afroz to be paid by state of U.P. within a month, describing his preventive detention as punitive.
In June Justice Vinod Diwakar of U.P. High Court criticized the U.P. police for resorting to half-encounters called in popular police parlance as ‘operation langda,’ where the accused is shot in the leg, either to please their administrative or political bosses or to earn an out-of-turn promotion, emphasizing that police do not have the power to punish any individual. The Court said that the officers were more loyal to their political bosses rather than the Constitution and that the officers and politicians acted with feudal mindset invoking Gangsters Act against inconvenient individuals. The observations were made in a case from Ghaziabad where a family was portrayed as an organized gang without any evidence. According to guidelines a FIR should be registered after every encounter in which the investigation is to be carried out by Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department of the state. Police officers involved in encounters are prohibited from receiving any awards until the investigation is completed.
In May, a bench of UP High Court comprising of Justice J.J. Munir and Justice Tarun Saxena expressed dissatisfaction with the police’s role and observed that State should try to protect life of people rather than just bring the murderers to justice.
The U.P. Chief Minister has, however, defended the police action commenting that without official security cover the prominent critics would turn into bhigi billi. Of course, we have all seen the sorry figure he cut even as a Member of Parliament when he felt his life was threatened before he had the state security cover which comes with the CM post. After he became CM, he has from public platforms threatened criminals using phrases like ‘thok do’ or ‘ram naam satya kar dete hain’ even before their crimes have been proved. We have seen bulldozer action against many an accused, at least one of whom from Ayodhya, Moid Khan was acquitted in a gangrape case later. Yogi Adityanath’s overzealous stand of zero-tolerance for crime and criminals has conflated the roles of executive and judiciary. His provocative statements have acted as indirect condoning of punitive action by police against the accused. He is singularly responsible for the deterioration of criminal investigation and policing in U.P. as observed by various Courts and various Judges in case after case even within the last six months as elaborated in this article.
The police can be restricted in U.P. from indulging in illegal actions only when somebody will the tell the CM that as an executive it is not his role to issue threatening statements against accused criminals and that it is only the judiciary which can award punishments. Moreover, he has to stop acting out of political vendetta which may suit his polarizing politics but is certainly against the law, as pointed out by Judges in the above-mentioned cases.
Sandeep Pandey is Secretary General of Socialist Party (India) and Shashank Singh is Advocate in HC, Delhi and SC as well as Convenor of Socialist Lawyers’ Forum. E-mail ids: [email protected] and [email protected]