Two criminal cases, three years apart, were enough for the authorities to brand the petitioner a ‘Goonda’ and place him under a reporting requirement. The High Court held that settled law forbids exactly this, said the statute was being used as a tool of oppression, and for the first time backed the warning with money: Rs 50,000 in damages, recoverable from the officers’ own salaries.
Prayagraj: The Allahabad High Court has quashed an order declaring a man a “Goonda” under the Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Act, 1970 on the basis of two criminal cases, holding that the statute is being used as a tool of oppression by the bureaucracy and the State, and has awarded the petitioner Rs 50,000 in damages, with liberty to the State to recover the amount from the salaries of the officers concerned [Abhishek Tyagi v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Others].
Justice Sandeep Jain allowed the writ petition, setting aside both the order that branded the petitioner and the appellate order that had affirmed it.
The background
Proceedings under Sections 2 and 3 of the 1970 Act were initiated against the petitioner on the strength of two criminal cases registered at the same police station in Ghaziabad, one from 2022 under provisions of the IPC and one from 2025 under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. By an order of September 2025, the Additional Commissioner of Police, Ghaziabad, declared him a Goonda and directed him to reside at his permanent address and mark his attendance at the local police station on the second and fourth Saturday of every month for six months.
His appeal to the Commissioner, Meerut Division, was dismissed in December 2025, after which he moved the High Court. His counsel argued that it is well settled that a person cannot be branded a Goonda merely on the basis of two cases. The State defended the orders, submitting that the two registered cases showed the petitioner to be a habitual offender and that the orders suffered from no illegality.
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What ‘habitually’ means
The Court set out a line of authority on the meaning of the word at the centre of the Act. Under the definition of Goonda, a person can be treated as such only where he is habitually involved in the commission of the offences the Act specifies, and courts have repeatedly held that one or two cases will not do.
Drawing on earlier decisions, the Court reproduced the settled explanation of the term:
“The expression ‘habitually’ means ‘repeatedly’ or ‘persistently’. It implies a thread of continuity stringing together similar repetitive acts. Repeated, persistent and similar, but not isolated, individual and dissimilar acts are necessary to justify an inference of habit.”
The Court also recalled the principles governing the Act more broadly: that the legislation is preventive and not punitive, that it is a powerful tool to be used sparingly in clear cases of public disorder, that it is not intended to punish a person without conviction for a substantive offence, and that it must not be allowed to be misused as a tool of oppression of innocent persons. It noted, too, the observations of a Division Bench that the label Goonda itself carries a bundle load of bad name, and that a casual branding causes irreparable damage to a person’s reputation and that of his family.
Applying it to the case
On the facts, the Court found the branding unsustainable. The petitioner had been declared a Goonda on the basis of just two criminal cases, and there was a gap of three years between them, which the Court held showed that he was not a habitual offender. Such punitive action, it observed, causes irreparable damage to the reputation of the person and his family.
Holding that the proceedings could not be sustained, the Court quashed both the order of September 2025 and the appellate order of December 2025.
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The damages, and the message behind them
What lifts this order above the many that have quashed such branding is what the Court did next. It recorded that despite its consistent stand that one or two cases cannot support a Goonda declaration, the bureaucracy had deliberately not noticed the position and was continuing to pass contrary orders, increasing the pendency of the courts and the suffering of the people. The Act, it said, was being used as a tool of oppression by the bureaucracy and the State, contrary to its own objects.
The Court noted that it had until now refrained from imposing damages on officials passing what it called whimsical orders, but that the time had come to send a strong message. It awarded the petitioner Rs 50,000 in damages for the suffering and agony caused by his being declared a Goonda, and gave the State liberty to recover the sum from the salaries of the officers concerned. The amount is to be paid within a month, failing which the petitioner may initiate recovery proceedings.
Why it matters
The legal proposition here is not new, and that is precisely the Court’s complaint. That a person cannot be branded a Goonda on one or two cases has been settled in Uttar Pradesh for years, restated by single judges and Division Benches alike. The problem the order identifies is not doubt about the law but non-compliance with it, a pattern of executive orders passed as though the settled position did not exist, each of which forces the citizen into the High Court to have an unlawful label removed.
The award of personal, recoverable damages is the Court’s attempt to change the incentive. So long as an unlawful branding costs the officer nothing and the State merely defends it until it is quashed, there is little to deter the next one. Fixing the cost on the individual officer’s salary, rather than on the public exchequer, is designed to make arbitrary action personally expensive. Whether that recovery in fact follows will depend on the State acting on the liberty the Court has given it, which is a step within the administration’s own hands.
Two cautions are worth stating. The order quashes a preventive measure and awards damages for a wrongful label; it records nothing about the merits of the two underlying criminal cases, which stand on their own footing and proceed independently. And the damages direction gives the State liberty to recover from the officers rather than itself fixing liability on any named official after hearing him, so the identification and any recovery will be a separate exercise, to be conducted in accordance with law.
Case Title: Abhishek Tyagi v. State of Uttar Pradesh and 3 Others [Criminal Misc. Writ Petition No. 1903 of 2026]
Bench: Justice Sandeep Jain, High Court of Judicature at Allahabad
Date of Judgment: September 10, 2026 | Citation: 2026 LiveLaw (AB) 707
Appearances: Advocates Akhilesh Kumar Vishwakarma and Anil Kumar Singh for the petitioner. The Additional Government Advocate for the State.
Status: Writ petition allowed. Branding orders quashed. Rs 50,000 damages awarded, recoverable from the salaries of the officers concerned. The two underlying criminal cases are unaffected.