The Court had asked the States to show, not tell. It wanted proof that the Supreme Court’s safeguards against unnecessary arrest were working on the ground, not another sheaf of standard operating procedures. What it got, it said, was the same bureaucratic reflex: affidavits filed, SOPs re-annexed, and, in one case, an affidavit from a Chief Secretary whose annexures were not even legible. Calling the exercise a farce that looks rosy on the surface but is far from the actual realities, the Punjab and Haryana High Court rejected that affidavit and summoned the officers who would actually know, the SHOs of three police stations, to appear with their real records.
Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has sharply criticised the States of Punjab and Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh for what it described as compliance on paper with the Supreme Court’s directions to curb unnecessary arrests, and has summoned the Station House Officers of three police stations to appear in person with their actual records, in a batch of contempt petitions concerning the enforcement of arrest safeguards.
Justice Sudeepti Sharma, hearing the connected contempt matters with the assistance of Senior Advocate Ankur Mittal as Amicus Curiae, passed the directions after perusing the compliance affidavits filed by the Chief Secretaries and Directors General of Police of the three jurisdictions.
The background
The proceedings arise from the long line of authority on avoiding unnecessary arrests, beginning with the Supreme Court’s decision in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, which laid down that police officers must not arrest an accused mechanically, and Magistrates must not authorise detention casually, in cases where the offence is punishable with imprisonment of up to seven years. Those directions were elaborated by the Delhi High Court in Amandeep Singh Johar, and then reinforced by the Supreme Court in Satender Kumar Antil v. CBI, which directed all States and Union Territories to frame standing orders for the procedure to be followed under Sections 41 and 41A of the CrPC.
Despite those repeated directions, the Court observed, much of the compliance had been made on paper, with affidavit after affidavit filed but minimal done on the ground, the live examples being the very contempt proceedings before it, in which the notices issued were found not to be in the prescribed format and without acknowledgment. By an earlier order, the Court had directed the authorities to show how the directions were being complied with in letter and spirit, and to place on record the proformas used for issuing Section 41A notices.
‘A farce exercise’
The Court found the affidavits filed in response to fall short. The annexures to the affidavit of the Chief Secretary to the Government of Punjab, it noted, were not even legible, which it called a very sad state of affairs for an official of such rank, and rejected the affidavit, directing a fresh one. More fundamentally, the Court held, the affidavits once again placed on record standard operating procedures of various dates to show compliance, whereas in reality none of them showed actual compliance.
Recording the Amicus Curiae’s submission that the spirit of its earlier order had been crushed by the filing of so-called compliance affidavits that adopted the same old bureaucratic approach of filing papers, the Court did not mince words about what the exercise amounted to:
“The filing of mere SOP by the higher officers who were called upon to show how these directions are being complied with in its true letter and spirit, is nothing but amounts to carrying out a farce exercise which looks rosy on surface but is far from the actual realities.”
The position, the Court noted, was all the more disconcerting because the contempt petitions themselves disclosed instances where the statutory safeguards had not been followed: the actual notices purportedly issued under Section 41A CrPC, available on the record, were ex facie not in the prescribed format, did not bear the requisite serial or reference particulars, were not accompanied by the prescribed acknowledgment, and, in some instances, had even been transmitted through WhatsApp. Yet the State’s response proceeded on the basis of SOPs and instructions on paper, without dealing with the actual notices in the individual cases.
The discrepancy between the compliance projected on paper and the actual material before it, the Court held, pricked the judicial conscience and warranted a deeper examination of compliance at the operational level.
SHOs summoned with the real records
To move from paper to practice, the Court directed the Station House Officers of Police Station Phase-I, Mohali; Police Station Sector 11, Chandigarh; and Police Station Sector 5, Panchkula, to appear in person with the actual records maintained after the issuance of their respective standing orders. The records called for included the indexed booklets of serially numbered notices in triplicate carbon-copy format, the carbon copies of the actual notices issued with the case diaries in which they are retained, proof of acknowledgment in the prescribed format, the year-wise registers of notices maintained at the police station, and proof of actual service of each notice.
The Court also required a separate statement of all cases in which, despite a notice being issued and complied with, an arrest was nevertheless effected, along with the reasons recorded by the officer and the material placed before the Magistrate, and the case files of matters in which an arrest was made without any notice being issued, together with the justification. The Directors General of Police of Haryana, Punjab and Chandigarh were directed to ensure the production of the records, and to produce the rules framed for the preservation and destruction of the used booklets, as required under Satender Kumar Antil. The officers directed to appear, the Court made clear, must be well versed with the actual procedure being followed in their stations. The matter was adjourned to September 29.
Why it matters
The order is a study in the gap between judicial direction and administrative reality. The safeguards against unnecessary arrest, a notice under Section 41A rather than an arrest where the offence is not grave, an acknowledgment, a recorded reason where an arrest is nonetheless made, exist to protect personal liberty against the routine, mechanical use of the power to arrest that Arnesh Kumar deplored. When compliance is demonstrated only through standing orders and affidavits, while the actual notices in the very cases before the court are irregular or sent over WhatsApp, the safeguards exist on paper alone, and the liberty they protect is left unguarded in practice.
The Court’s response, refusing to be satisfied by SOPs and calling for the physical records of individual police stations, is a pointed technique for closing that gap. By summoning the Station House Officers with their booklets, registers and acknowledgments, and by demanding a case-by-case account of arrests made despite or without a notice, the Court has shifted the inquiry from what the rules say to what the police actually do, which is where the mandate of Arnesh Kumar and Satender Kumar Antil either lives or fails. The rejection of an illegible Chief Secretary’s affidavit, and the sharp language about a farce exercise, signal that the Court will not accept the appearance of compliance in place of the substance.
The proceedings are ongoing, and no finding of contempt has been recorded; the arguments were heard in part and the matter stands adjourned. But the order is a significant example of a constitutional court using its contempt jurisdiction not to punish, at least not yet, but to compel genuine, verifiable implementation of liberty-protecting safeguards, and a caution to senior officers that a well-drafted standing order is no substitute for its faithful observance on the ground.
Case Title: Sandeep Kumar v. Pankaj Nain, IPS and Others, and connected contempt petitions
Bench: Justice Sudeepti Sharma, High Court of Punjab and Haryana at Chandigarh
Date of Order: September 16, 2026
Amicus Curiae: Senior Advocate Ankur Mittal
Status: Compliance affidavits found to reflect ‘paper compliance’; Punjab Chief Secretary’s affidavit rejected as illegible; SHOs of three police stations summoned with actual records. Contempt proceedings pending; adjourned to September 29.