Pointing to serious lapses in invoking the Gangsters Act in a case against five members of a Ghaziabad-based family, the Allahabad High Court has observed that police officers, barring a few, are more loyal to the ruling establishment than to the Constitution since their transfers, postings, and promotions are used as instruments of political patronage rather than merit-based governance.
Maintaining that the state apparatus must remain answerable to the law and to the Constitution and not to the ruling establishment, the single bench of Justice Vinod Diwakar observed that “field officers, acutely conscious of the transfer-posting economy, calibrate their conduct to satisfy their political superiors” and those “perceived as loyalists are rewarded with preferred postings”.
Quashing the trial proceedings pending in the additional sessions judge’s court in the case filed under the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act at the Nandgram police station in Ghaziabad in 2023, the bench in its June 3 order said, “Many times, FIRs are registered or suppressed with ulterior motives, and preventive detention provisions are invoked arbitrarily, at the whims of officers. Judicial orders are complied with in form but defeated in substance.”
In the case, one of the accused — a woman — remained in jail for more than two-and-a-half-months, the court was told.
Two FIRs were lodged in 2022 against the family over financial transactions and payments in connection with the purchase of land. The accused had issued cheques in favour of the complainant and faced charges of cheating and forgery. Police and administration invoked the Gangsters Act against them a year later.
After going through the chargesheet, the court said not a single “averment has been made against three of the accused sent to jail which could satisfy the ingredients of the Gangsters Act”. “The accused may have committed offences of cheating and forgery, however, the same does not amount to, and cannot be construed as, running an organised gang,” the court ruled.
“There is no material on record which could establish the use of violence, intimidation, coercion, or any other means with the object of disturbing public order or of gaining any undue temporal or pecuniary advantage,” it stated.
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The court added, “Uttar Pradesh, by virtue of its demographic magnitude and political significance, has historically been a crucible of political hegemony, driven by the feudal mindset of politicians and bureaucrats. It has long reduced constitutional governance to an instrument of personal dominion rather than public service. The administrative machinery of the State has, over successive regimes, been susceptible to deep political penetration.”
“This court has no hesitation in observing that urban Commissionerates, lucrative districts while those demonstrating independence are transferred punitively to inconsequential assignments, a well-known fact.”
“A considerable section of the officer cadre treats the rule of law not as a constitutional obligation but as an operational inconvenience. Encounter killings, selective crackdowns, and targeted use of the Gangsters Act against inconvenient individuals have periodically attracted judicial notice,” the bench observed.
Citing the brutal killing of eight policemen in an ambush by gangster Vikas Dubey at Bikru village of Kanpur in 2021, the bench said “the police officer, who was entrusted with the supervision of the entire operation in the massacre was, upon conclusion of the departmental enquiry, visited with nothing more than a formal caution”.
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“This culture of institutional impunity that emboldens those in authority to remain unaccountable, perpetuating the feudal and politically patronised administrative ecosystem.
With deep constitutional concern, this Court concludes that the Home Secretary, as the senior-most bureaucratic authority in the Home Department, occupies a pivotal position in this ecosystem. Certain officers who rose to the post of Home Secretary have, in practice, served as conduits for self-serving interests. The Home Department must independently evaluate the suitability and operational effectiveness of its officers… It is a solemn judicial reminder that constitutional governance cannot be held hostage to individual expediency or an individual’s convenience,” the bench further remarked.
