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Rejects on , Orders SHOs to Appear
In a sharp rebuke to the bureaucratic machinery of Punjab, Haryana, and Chandigarh, the on Wednesday rejected filed by their top police and administrative officers, declaring that the documents merely projected a "" while with -mandated remained absent on the ground.
Justice Sudeepti Sharma, hearing a batch of alleging persistent violations of the Arnesh Kumar and Satender Kumar Antil directions, ordered the Station House Officers of three police stations to personally appear before the court with actual records—from indexed notice booklets to and . The court made clear that paper assurances would no longer suffice.
A Decade of Unheeded Directions
The legal framework is well settled. In Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar (2014), the directed that police must not arrest unnecessarily in offences punishable with imprisonment up to seven years, and magistrates must not authorise detention mechanically. The Satender Kumar Antil v. (2022) judgment reinforced this by directing all states and union territories to issue on the procedure under (now ).
Yet, the
before the
revealed a stark disconnect. The court noted that despite detailed directions,
"much compliances have been made on paper and affidavits after affidavits have been filed, but minimal has been actually done on ground."
On , the court directed the Directors General of Police and Chief Secretaries of Punjab, Haryana, and Chandigarh to file specific affidavits demonstrating how the
Antil
directions were being complied with
"in its
."
The response, however, was disappointing.
'' on Display
, the amicus curiae, submitted that the court had asked for two specific things: how the
Antil
directions were being implemented, and the proformas used for Section 41A notices. Instead, the affidavits merely placed on record
that were already available.
"The spirit of the order which contained clear directions has itself been crushed with the filing of so-called
by adopting same old bureaucratic approach of filing papers,"
Mittal argued.
He pointed to the very documents annexed to the —actual notices issued under Section 41A—which revealed that they were not in the , lacked serial or reference particulars, carried no acknowledgment, and in one case ( ) were transmitted through WhatsApp.
The court agreed.
"The filing of mere SOP by the higher officers who were called upon to show how these directions are being complied with in its
, is nothing but amounts to carrying out a
which looks rosy on surface but is far from the actual realities,"
Justice Sharma observed.
One affidavit was so poorly prepared that its annexures were illegible.
"This is a very sad state of affairs that the official of such a higher rank is filing such kind of affidavit, annexures attached to which are not even legible,"
the court said, rejecting the affidavit filed by Punjab Chief Secretary K.A.P. Sinha.
: Court Demands Actual Records
The court underscored that none of the affidavits showed
.
"The discrepancy between the compliance projected on paper and the actual material placed before the Court necessarily
and warrants a deeper examination of compliance at the operational level,"
it noted.
What the court had directed was something substantially more than the mere production of SOPs. It wanted demonstration of the actual mechanism of implementation, including:
- Whether in were being issued by each Station House Officer to Investigating Officers;
- Whether used booklets were deposited and maintained until the final report;
- What rules governed preservation, retrieval, and destruction of such booklets and acknowledgments.
To ensure the
Antil
mandate is
"transformed into
at the ground level,"
the court directed the SHOs of
,
, and
, to appear on the next date with the following records for the period after the respective SOPs were issued:
- Indexed booklet of serially numbered notices in ;
- Carbon copies of actual notices issued, along with the case diary in which each is retained;
- Proof of acknowledgment in the ;
- The year-wise register maintained at the police station detailing notices issued by Investigating Officers;
- Proof of actual service of each notice, including acknowledgment;
- A separate statement of all cases where arrest was effected despite notice and compliance, with reasons recorded and material placed before the magistrate;
- Case files of cases where arrest was made without a notice, with reasons and material justifying it.
The Directors General of Police of the three jurisdictions were directed to ensure production of the record and also to produce the rules framed for preservation and destruction of the used booklets. The court stressed that the SHOs must be
"well versed with the actual procedure/compliances being made in their respective police stations."
What's Next?
Arguments were heard in part, and the matter was adjourned to , at 2:00 PM. The court made it clear that it would not tolerate mere and expected the officers to bring the actual before it. The case is being watched closely as a potential template for enforcing the Arnesh Kumar safeguards across the country.
