Days before the Bihar Assembly election, a district magistrate branded an elected panchayat representative an anti-social element and ordered him to report to a police station 40 kilometres away three days a week. The Patna High Court found the magistrate had nothing before him but the police superintendent’s forwarding letter, had not seen the actual allegations, and had given the man two days to reply. Calling him a post office who exercised a drastic power without an independent mind, the Court quashed the order and awarded compensation.
Patna: The Patna High Court has quashed an externment order passed under the Bihar Control of Crimes Act, 2024 against an elected panchayat representative in the run-up to the 2025 Bihar Assembly election, holding that the District Magistrate had exercised a drastic power interfering with personal liberty without applying an independent and judicious mind, and in violation of the principles of natural justice [Chandan Kumar v. The State of Bihar and Others].
A Division Bench of Justice Rajeev Ranjan Prasad and Justice Sunil Dutta Mishra allowed the writ petition, set aside the order, and directed the State to pay the petitioner Rs 50,000 in compensation along with Rs 10,000 towards the cost of litigation.
The order under challenge
By an order of October 2025, the District Magistrate, Nalanda, acting under Section 3(3) of the Bihar Control of Crimes Act, directed the petitioner to present himself before the officer-in-charge of the Silao police station three days a week for two months, restrained him from moving beyond the jurisdiction of his local police station without permission, and forbade him from carrying sticks, blades, knives or iron articles. The stated basis was that the petitioner appeared to be an anti-social element whose movements raised a likelihood of alarm and danger to the public during the upcoming Assembly election.
The petitioner, who is an elected representative of the panchayat, challenged both the externment order and the preceding show-cause notice, contending that he did not fall within the statutory definition of an anti-social element and that the entire exercise was a false and politically timed action that violated his rights under Articles 19 and 21.
A magistrate with nothing before him
The most striking finding concerns what the District Magistrate actually had on his file. In the course of the hearing the Court called upon the District Magistrate to explain the exercise, and on the admitted position that emerged, the Court held that he had no material before him except the forwarding letter of the Superintendent of Police.
The consequences of that void were several. The magistrate was not in a position to understand the actual allegations in the FIRs; he was not informed that the petitioner was on bail in all of those cases; the show-cause notice did not enclose the extracts of the general-diary entries said to ground the apprehension; and there was no averment that the petitioner had misused bail or done anything in the relevant period to justify a belief that he would disrupt the election. The Court recorded that if bail had been misused, the proper course was to seek its cancellation before the court concerned, which had not been done.
From this the Court drew its central conclusion:
“…the District Magistrate, who was required to apply his judicious mind as he was exercising a drastic power to interfere with the liberty of the petitioner, could not apply an independent and judicious mind.”
The Court described the magistrate as having acted “as a Post Office only to forward the police report”, the superintendent’s recommendation being the sole thing before him, so that he had not even seen the nature of the allegations.
An inadequate hearing
The Court also found the opportunity to be heard illusory. The show-cause notice was served on the petitioner only two full days before he was required to appear with his written explanation, which the Court held could not be regarded as an adequate, much less appropriate, opportunity to explain as envisaged by Section 3 of the Act. That the petitioner was an elected panchayat representative made the failure to verify the apprehensions before restricting his movement for two months harder to justify.
The Court further held that the practical effect of the order amounted to externment in substance. Requiring the petitioner to attend the Silao police station, some 40 kilometres away, on three days each week, and to seek permission before moving outside his police-station jurisdiction on those days, meant he would effectively have to remain at the station through those days, unable to move without the officer-in-charge’s leave.
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Compensation and a caution
The Court noted that although it had stayed the order in November 2025, the petitioner had by then already suffered its rigours for about a month. On that footing, while setting aside the order, it directed the State to pay Rs 50,000 in compensation and Rs 10,000 as litigation cost, both within a month.
It closed with a caution to the administration:
“…the officers sitting at the highest echelons in the administration, such as the District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police, are required to be law-abiding and they must conform to the procedures established by law while exercising their drastic powers. Repeated violation of the mandatory procedures of drastic laws, such as the BCC Act, would demean the confidence of the public at large.”
Why it matters
Externment and similar preventive powers are, by design, exercised on suspicion rather than proof, and that is precisely why the law hedges them with procedural safeguards: a genuine application of mind by the deciding authority, a real opportunity to be heard, and material that actually supports the apprehension. Strip those away and the power becomes a tool to remove inconvenient persons from circulation without ever proving anything against them. This judgment is a reminder that the safeguards are not formalities but the only thing standing between preventive administration and arbitrary detention.
The “post office” finding is the heart of it. A district magistrate exercising this power is not a conduit for the police; the statute vests the decision in him precisely so that an independent authority weighs whether the drastic step is warranted. Where, as the Court found here, he has only the superintendent’s forwarding letter and has not seen the allegations, the bail status or the underlying diary entries, there is no independent decision at all, only a rubber stamp. That the man was an elected representative, and that the timing coincided with an election, sharpened the concern that the power was being deployed for a purpose other than the maintenance of public order.
The award of compensation gives the ruling teeth. Quashing an unlawful order restores the status quo, but it does not answer for the month of hardship the petitioner had already suffered under it. By directing the State to pay, the Court recognised that a wrong exercise of a liberty-restricting power carries a cost that should not fall on the citizen alone, an approach increasingly seen where courts find that drastic statutes have been misused. The accompanying caution to district magistrates and superintendents, that repeated procedural violations erode public confidence, is addressed beyond this case to a pattern the Court appears to have seen before, having referred to a similar matter from the same police station.
Nothing in the judgment holds that the petitioner could never be proceeded against, or that the BCC Act is itself objectionable. What it holds is that this order, made in this way, on this material, and with this hearing, could not stand. The safeguards, not the suspicion, decided the case.
Case Title: Chandan Kumar v. The State of Bihar and Others [Cr. WJC No. 2913 of 2025]
Bench: Justice Rajeev Ranjan Prasad and Justice Sunil Dutta Mishra, High Court of Judicature at Patna
Reserved on: July 14, 2026 | Pronounced on: September 11, 2026
Appearances: Advocate Pratik Kumar Sinha for the petitioner. Standing Counsel Sushil Kumar Mandal and Prashant Kumar for the State.
Status: Writ petition allowed. Externment order set aside. Rs 50,000 compensation and Rs 10,000 litigation cost awarded, payable within a month.