Allahabad HC slams UP govt for misusing Goondas Act, warns of damages

Last week, Allahabad High Court came down heavily on the UP government over alleged misuse of Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Act 1970. Cases before it, it noted, suggested the state was using the law as a tool of harassment, adding that such misuse will invite punitive damages.

The court made its statement while quashing an order by the Gonda DM declaring a person a 'goonda' and externing him for 6 mths. It reminded the executive that a solitary case does not make a habitual offender, and an acquittal can't become a tool of surveillance and instrument of harassment.

Read more: Noida DM moves SC against Allahabad HC order reprimanding her for student's detention under NSA


Appetite for such procedural shortcuts is becoming worryingly systemic. Only weeks earlier, the high court had called Deoria police officials a 'bunch of liars' after they claimed station CCTV cameras were non-functional during alleged illegal detention of four individuals. Its split verdict on 'bulldozer justice' also exposed the constitutional tension around executive overreach.

Nowhere was this more glaring than in the case of Aakriti Chaudhary. The 24-yr-old DU student activist was slapped with NSA for advocating for low-wage workers protesting in Noida. Her preventive detention paperwork was found to be generated after she had been taken into custody, a move the court termed a 'sham'. Finding no evidence of incitement, it quashed her detention.

Governments have the duty to preserve law and order. But law enforcement without constitutional fidelity is coercion. Maintaining public order doesn't give the executive a blank cheque to forgo fundamental rights without proof, evidence and due process. When preventive laws are weaponised to quiet dissent, or paperwork is forged to justify illegal custody, we risk sliding into, as the court said, 'Orwellian dystopia'.