The reasons for arrest handed to an accused and the version the State placed before the Allahabad High Court did not match. The Bench has declared the arrest unlawful, ordered the man’s release and directed the Farrukhabad police chief to register an FIR against the investigating officer, who, it found, appears to have inserted the extra particulars later.
Prayagraj: Two scanned copies of one document, laid side by side, decided a habeas corpus petition in the Allahabad High Court on Wednesday. The Court held that the arrest of a man in an abetment of suicide case was unlawful because the reasons for arrest and the grounds of arrest were never communicated to him as the law requires, and it directed the Superintendent of Police, Farrukhabad, to forthwith get an FIR registered against the investigating officer, who, the Court found, appeared to have inserted the missing particulars into the reasons for arrest after the event [Mohd. Yaseen v. State of U.P. and 3 Others].
The order, dated November 4, 2026, was passed by a Division Bench of Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Achal Sachdev in a habeas corpus writ petition filed by Mohd. Yaseen.
What the State produced, and what the accused was given
Counsel for the State submitted, on instructions from the police, that the reasons for arrest and the arrest memo had been prepared separately and handed to the petitioner on September 14, 2026, and that the document purportedly bore his signature. The State placed that document before the Court, and the Bench reproduced it in the order.
The Bench then compared the scanned copies. The arrest memo produced by the State was identical to the one the petitioner had been given. The reasons for arrest were not. The copy given to the petitioner, at page 46 of the petition, mentioned only Section 108 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (abetment of suicide). The Bench recorded:
“The remaining particulars that a case has been registered and that evidence has emerged indicating that the deceased committed suicide on account of the harassment meted out to her by the petitioner, are conspicuously absent from the copy furnished to the petitioner.”
“The only inescapable inference”
That gap led the Bench to conclude that the reasons for arrest were never supplied to the petitioner, and that the extra lines were added afterwards, with the altered papers then placed before the remand Magistrate and the bail court:
“The only inescapable inference is that the later part given to the reasons for arrest has been inserted by the investigating officer and subsequently the papers placed before the remand Magistrate and the papers placed before the learned court for deciding the bail application (bail application was rejected) reflect that an offence under Chapter XIV of the BNS relating to “false evidence and offence against public justice”, appears to have been committed by the investigating officer.”
The Bench did not hold back on the police conduct either:
“This Court deprecates such action on the part of the police for fabricating evidence only in order to satisfy the reasons for arrest and the memo of arrest which were never given to the petitioner and to deny him the relief in the remand proceedings and bail proceedings.”
Release ordered, FIR directed
Holding that the reasons and grounds of arrest had not been communicated in compliance with the law laid down by the Supreme Court in a catena of judgments, the Bench declared the arrest unlawful and ordered that the petitioner “shall be released forthwith, if not wanted in any other case.”
The Superintendent of Police, Farrukhabad, has been told to forthwith get an FIR registered against the investigating officer under the relevant provisions of Chapter XIV of the BNS, and to place a compliance report before the Court within seven days. The State’s counsel was asked to ensure immediate compliance. Copies of the order went to the SP, the District Judge, Farrukhabad, and the Magistrate concerned through the Registrar (Compliance), and the case will be taken up as fresh on November 16, 2026.
The finding against the officer is a prima facie one made for directing registration of an FIR; the officer’s liability, like the allegations against the petitioner in the abetment case, remains to be tested in law, and both are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
The arrest and the case behind it
The arrest memo records the petitioner’s arrest on September 14, 2026. He said he had in fact been taken into custody a day earlier, on September 13, when he went to the police station with his lawyer to join the investigation into the death of the complainant’s daughter.
The prosecution case is that the complainant’s daughter died by suicide on account of harassment by the petitioner, and his bail application had been rejected by the court concerned. These remain allegations, and the High Court’s order does not decide them.
The Bench noted that the arrest memo, at pages 44 and 45 of the petition, was “by itself deficient in material particulars relating to the reasons of arrest.”
Why the order matters
Courts have repeatedly held that an arrested person must be told the reasons and grounds of arrest, and that failure to do so vitiates the arrest. This order goes a step further. Rather than treating a defective arrest paper as a procedural lapse, the Bench set what the accused actually received against what the police later produced, found that the two did not match, and treated the difference as possible fabrication of evidence by the officer. With an FIR ordered and a seven-day compliance timeline fixed, the Court has signalled that back-filled arrest records placed before remand and bail courts can carry criminal consequences for the officer, not only release for the accused.
Case Title: Mohd. Yaseen v. State of U.P. and 3 Others
Case No.: Habeas Corpus Writ Petition No. 1626 of 2026
Bench: Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Achal Sachdev, High Court of Judicature at Allahabad
Date of Order: November 4, 2026
Next Date: November 16, 2026
Appearances: Advocate Satya Dheer Singh Jadaun for the petitioner; Government Advocate for the State
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