On October 7, 2026, a bench of Justices Atul Sreedharan and Achal Sachdev of the Allahabad High Court did not mince words, remarking that the state of the police in Uttar Pradesh is a mess and that officers operate with the impunity of believing they can do anything and get away with it. Hearing a habeas corpus petition filed by a man named Deepak, the Court admonished the Assistant Commissioner of Police and the Station House Officer of Gautam Buddha Nagar.
The judges noted they should be ashamed of issuing a notice to the accused under Section 130 of the Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Samhita (BNSS) when he was already in police custody, only to subsequently show him as arrested after the registration of an FIR. In doing so, the police blatantly attempted to legitimize an illegal arrest through a subsequent remand order.
This is not an isolated incident. On October 1, 2026, a Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Sanjay Kumar and Sanjeev Sachdeva castigated the U.P. police in a case where an FIR was registered against an unknown motorcycle rider, even though the suspect had been caught on the spot. The Court observed that the police appear to be operating with a hidden agenda, questioning how the public could ever trust law enforcement if it proceeds in such a deceptive manner. The bench went so far as to suggest that the U.P. police might as well be disbanded, with all investigations handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Consequently, the Circle Officer of Khurja, Bulandshahr, was directed to remain present at the next hearing to explain the circumstances surrounding the filing of this sham FIR.
On the very same day, another Allahabad High Court bench, comprising Justices Atul Sreedharan and Divesh Chandra Samant, delivered a scathing observation regarding police strong-arm tactics. The Court ruled that detaining a family member of an accused to pressure them into surrendering is tantamount to an unlawful deprivation of liberty. In this case, a man was illegally held for four days at a Prayagraj police station solely to force his brother, an accused in an attempted murder case, to surrender. The Court awarded Rs. 40,000 in compensation to the victim, to be recovered directly from the salaries of the responsible police personnel, and directed that their judicial displeasure be formally noted in the officers' service records.
The pattern of administrative overreach extends to the misuse of draconian laws. On September 8, in the case of Akriti Chaudhary, a Delhi University law student against whom the National Security Act (NSA) was invoked for her alleged role in a workers' protest demanding better wages in Noida earlier this year, the Allahabad High Court intervened decisively. A bench of Justices Atul Sreedharan and Achal Sachdev termed the administration's actions despotic conduct by an errant bureaucracy that could reduce Uttar Pradesh to an Orwellian dystopia. While revoking the NSA detention, the Court imposed a Rs. 5 lakh fine on the District Magistrate of Gautam Buddha Nagar, Medha Roopam, to be recovered from her salary, holding her guilty of a lack of application of mind and violating her oath of allegiance, alongside other officers down to the SHO. The Court further ordered that its displeasure be recorded in the service files of the responsible officers. Although the Supreme Court later stayed the monetary fine on September 23, it firmly upheld the quashing of the NSA detention.
Similarly, on September 29, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Dipankar Dutta and Sheel Nagu quashed the NSA detention used to keep businessman Mulla Afroz incarcerated. Afroz had already secured bail from the High Court in six FIRs filed against him regarding the November 2024 Sambhal violence, where he was controversially described as the mastermind in connection with a court-ordered survey of the Shahi Jama Masjid. The Supreme Court disallowed an extra-judicial confession extracted from Afroz while in police custody, which the state had cynically used to invoke the NSA against him 34 days after he had been granted bail in one of the primary cases. Describing his preventive detention as blatantly punitive, the Court ordered the state of U.P. to pay Rs. 10 lakh in compensation to Mulla Afroz within a month.
The disregard for due process is perhaps most visible in the police's reliance on extrajudicial violence. In June, Justice Vinod Diwakar of the Allahabad High Court sharply criticized the U.P. police for resorting to half-encounters, colloquially known in police parlance as Operation Langda, where an accused is deliberately shot in the leg to incapacitate them. The Court emphasized that the police do not have the power to punish individuals, noting that such actions are often taken to please administrative or political bosses or to secure out-of-turn promotions. Justice Diwakar observed that these officers appear more loyal to their political masters than to the Constitution, acting with a feudal mindset by invoking the Gangsters Act against inconvenient individuals. These observations were made in a Ghaziabad case where an entire family was falsely portrayed as an organized gang without a shred of evidence. The Court reiterated that, as per established guidelines, an FIR must be registered after every encounter, with the investigation conducted by the state's Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department, and that officers involved are prohibited from receiving any awards until the investigation is conclusively completed.
This growing judicial dissent is not new. In May, a bench of the U.P. High Court comprising Justices J.J. Munir and Tarun Saxena expressed profound dissatisfaction with the police's overarching role, observing that the State's primary duty is to proactively protect the lives of its citizens, rather than merely acting as an avenger that brings murderers to justice after the fact.
Despite this mounting judicial condemnation, the U.P. Chief Minister has defiantly defended the police's actions, recently commenting that without official security cover, prominent critics would turn into bhigi billi (timid cats). This is rich coming from a leader who, as a Member of Parliament, cut a rather sorry figure when he claimed his life was threatened before he was entitled to the state security cover that accompanies the CM's post. Since assuming office, he has routinely used public platforms to threaten alleged criminals with phrases like thok do (shoot them) or ram naam satya kar dete hain (send them to their death), even before their guilt has been established in a court of law. We have witnessed the infamous bulldozer action against numerous accused individuals, at least one of whom, Moid Khan from Ayodhya, was later acquitted in a gang-rape case. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's overzealous, performative stand of zero tolerance for crime has dangerously conflated the roles of the executive and the judiciary. His provocative rhetoric serves as an indirect condoning of punitive, extra-legal action by the police against the accused. Ultimately, he bears singular responsibility for the deterioration of criminal investigation and policing standards in U.P., as observed by various courts and judges in case after case over the past six months alone.
The Uttar Pradesh police can be reined in from indulging in such illegal actions only when someone has the courage to tell the Chief Minister that, as part of the executive, it is not his role to issue threatening statements against the accused; it is solely the judiciary's domain to award punishment. Moreover, the administration must cease acting out of political vendetta. While such tactics may suit a polarizing political agenda, they are fundamentally antithetical to the rule of law, as unequivocally pointed out by the judiciary in the aforementioned cases.
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Sandeep Pandey is the Secretary General of the Socialist Party (India). Shashank Singh is an Advocate practicing in the High Court of Delhi and the Supreme Court, and serves as the Convenor of the Socialist Lawyers' Forum
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