Former SC judge-led panel to probe ‘police excesses’ against protesters

Why in the News

The Supreme Court has constituted a five member High-Powered Enquiry Committee headed by a former Supreme Court judge to examine alleged excesses and disproportionate use of force by police and security personnel at Jantar Mantar and other locations during last month’s protests over the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) paper leak. The Court framed twelve issues for the inquiry, covering both police conduct and violence by protesters. The order therefore turns a policing controversy into an examination of the constitutional limits on how the State may respond to assembly.

What is the High-Powered Enquiry Committee?

1. What it is: The High-Powered Enquiry Committee (HPEC) is a fact finding body constituted by the Supreme Court to examine allegations of excessive force by police and security personnel during the protests, and to report back to the Court.
2. Who heads it and who sits on it: It is headed by former Supreme Court judge R Subhash Reddy. Its members are former Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice Ravi Shankar Jha, former Delhi High Court judge Justice Shalinder Kaur, former Central Bureau of Investigation Director Rishi Kumar Shukla, and retired Director General of Police of Meghalaya L R Bishnoi.
3. How it must function: The inquiry is not to be a one time exercise. The Committee is to undertake a continuous and periodic assessment of the enumerated issues and submit interim findings periodically, so the Court can issue directions as warranted.
4. What it does not displace: The Court clarified that the constitution of the Committee shall in no way deter or debar police authorities or security forces from taking administrative or disciplinary action against officers found in contravention of the rules governing their conduct.

What is the current status of the right to protest in India?

1. The right itself: The right to protest is drawn from Article 19(1)(a), the freedom of speech and expression, and Article 19(1)(b), the right to assemble peaceably and without arms, read together.
2. The condition built into the text: The assembly must be peaceable and without arms, so the protection falls away for an assembly that turns violent or armed.
3. The limits on the right: Restrictions may be imposed under Article 19(2) on speech and Article 19(3) on assembly, and the restriction must be reasonable and imposed by law rather than by executive discretion alone.
4. No right to occupy a public space indefinitely: The Supreme Court in Amit Sahni v Commissioner of Police (2020) held that public ways and public spaces cannot be occupied indefinitely, and that demonstrations must take place in designated areas.
5. A blanket ban on a protest site is not permissible: In Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan v Union of India (2018) the Court set aside an absolute prohibition on demonstrations at Jantar Mantar and directed that guidelines be framed regulating rather than eliminating protest there.
6. Force must be proportionate and compensable: In Anita Thakur v State of Jammu and Kashmir (2016) the Court held that use of excessive force by police against demonstrators violates Article 21 and awarded compensation to the injured.
7. The operative statutory levers: Prohibitory orders are issued under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, and speech and assembly prosecutions have been brought under Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.

Constitutional Provisions Related to the Right to Protest and Police Accountability

1. Article 19(1)(a): Guarantees to all citizens the freedom of speech and expression, from which the right to voice dissent is drawn.
2. Article 19(1)(b): Guarantees the right to assemble peaceably and without arms.
3. Article 19(1)(c): Guarantees the right to form associations or unions, under which protest organisations operate.
4. Article 19(2): Permits the State to impose reasonable restrictions on the freedom of speech and expression on enumerated grounds.
5. Article 19(3): Permits reasonable restrictions on the right of assembly in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India or public order.
6. Article 21: Guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law, the provision under which bodily harm caused by disproportionate force is examined.
7. Article 22: Provides safeguards on arrest and detention, including the right to be informed of the grounds of arrest and to consult a legal practitioner.
8. Article 20(3): Protects a person accused of an offence against being compelled to be a witness against himself.
9. Article 32 and Article 226: Provide the remedies before the Supreme Court and the High Courts through which protest related grievances and monitored inquiries are brought.
10. Seventh Schedule, State List Entry 1 and Entry 2: Place public order and police within the legislative and executive competence of the States, which is why a national inquiry into police conduct proceeds through the Court rather than through a central department.

What is Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023?

1. What it does: Section 163 empowers a District Magistrate, a Sub-divisional Magistrate or an Executive Magistrate to issue a written order directing a person or the public generally to abstain from a specified act, where there is an apprehension of obstruction, annoyance, danger to human life or a disturbance of public tranquillity.
2. Its limits: An order under the section is temporary and cannot ordinarily remain in force beyond two months, and it corresponds to the power earlier exercised under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.

What is Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023?

1. What it criminalises: Section 152 punishes acts that excite secession, armed rebellion, subversive activities or separatist feelings, or that endanger the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India, with punishment extending to life imprisonment or seven years with fine.
2. What it replaced: It came into force on 1 July 2024 in place of Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, the sedition provision inserted in 1870, and its constitutional validity is under challenge on grounds of vagueness and overbreadth.

What are metallic kinetic projectiles?

1. What they are: Metallic kinetic projectiles, commonly called pellets, are small metal shot fired in a scattering pattern from pump-action rifles or projectile-action guns, used as a crowd control weapon.
2. Why they are contested: The scatter pattern makes the point of impact uncontrollable, so injuries to the eyes and upper body are common and the resulting harm is often irreversible.

What are the twelve issues the Committee will examine?

1. Issue 1, excessive force: Alleged use of excessive force and violence against protesters by police authorities and other agencies, including deployment of pellet guns, electric batons, lathi charges and tear gas without adequate warning or proportionality, resulting in severe bodily harm and injuries, some alleged to be of a grievous and lasting nature.
2. Issue 2, proportionality of response: Ensuring a proportionate and measured police response during protests, public gatherings and peaceful assemblies, so as to strike an appropriate balance between maintaining public order and exercising the constitutional right to peaceful dissent.
3. Issue 3, banning pellets: The desirability of banning the use of metallic kinetic projectiles or pellets fired from pump-action rifles or projectile-action guns, having regard to the grave and at times irreversible bodily harm they cause.
4. Issue 4, identification of officers: The necessity of ensuring that police and security personnel wear proper uniforms and visible nameplates while effecting arrests or using force during crowd control operations, to secure accountability and enable identification of individual officers.
5. Issue 5, surveillance: Allegations of monitoring and surveillance of protesters by police personnel, and the extent to which such measures were consistent with the protesters’ constitutional rights to privacy and free assembly.
6. Issue 6, female protesters: Alleged incidents of targeted violence, harassment, molestation and secondary victimisation directed against female protesters, which warrant a focused and expeditious enquiry.
7. Issue 7, medical support and compensation: The provision of medical and other requisite support, including award of compensation, to victims of alleged police abuse, and the manner and adequacy of the support extended so far.
8. Issue 8, prohibitory orders: Regulation of the issuance of blanket prohibitory orders under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, to prevent their use as a routine or pre-emptive measure that forecloses peaceful assembly rather than as a proportionate response to a real and imminent threat to public order.
9. Issue 9, thresholds for Section 152: The establishment of strict constitutional thresholds and safeguards to prevent Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 from being invoked to stifle political dissent and peaceful protest, so that it is not permitted to operate as a chilling restraint on constitutionally protected speech and assembly.
10. Issue 10, violence by protesters: Alleged use of force and violence by protesters against police officers and other security personnel.
11. Issue 11, damage to property: Damage to public property caused by the actions of protesters, including destruction of and injury to government installations, vehicles and other assets belonging to the State and to private citizens alike.
12. Issue 12, injuries to police: The injuries sustained by police forces in the course of discharging their duties, and the consequent mental and emotional trauma borne by their families.

Which issues has the Court told the Committee to take up first?

1. The two priority issues: The Committee is to address Issue 1 on excessive force and Issue 6 on targeted violence against female protesters on a priority basis, bearing in mind the sensitivity attendant on them.
2. The first deliverable: The Committee has been asked to complete its inquiry and deliberations on those two issues and submit its First Interim Report at the earliest.
3. The additional head opened: The Committee may also examine the grant of interim compensation to those injured on either side, whether police personnel or protesters.
4. The reporting design: Interim findings are to be submitted periodically rather than a single report at the end, so the Court can issue directions while the inquiry continues.
5. When the order was made: The order is dated 19 August 2026 and was released on 20 August 2026.

Why does the Court’s framing place police conduct and protester conduct on the same list?

1. The list is symmetrical by design: Nine issues concern police and State conduct and three concern protester conduct, so the inquiry is not framed solely as an investigation of the police.
2. The compensation head runs both ways: Interim compensation is opened for those injured on either side, which places an injured constable and an injured student within the same remedial frame.
3. Trauma is recognised on the police side: Issue 12 extends to the mental and emotional trauma borne by the families of injured police personnel, a head rarely written into an inquiry mandate.
4. Symmetry is not equivalence: The two issues marked for priority treatment are both allegations against the police, so the sequencing signals which set of allegations the Court treats as most urgent.
5. The disciplinary channel stays open in parallel: The Court expressly preserved the power of police authorities to take administrative or disciplinary action against their own officers, so the inquiry does not become a reason to suspend departmental accountability.
6. The tension the design carries: A committee asked simultaneously to judge police excess and protester violence must apply one standard of proportionality to an armed disciplined force and another to an unorganised crowd, without a settled test for either.

Major debates surrounding the right to protest and the use of force

1. Regulation against prohibition: One position holds that designated protest sites and prior permission are reasonable regulation of a public space, and the other holds that permission requirements convert a right into a licence.
2. Two rulings pulling in opposite directions: Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (2018) struck down a blanket prohibition at a protest site, and Amit Sahni (2020) held that public ways cannot be occupied indefinitely, so the boundary between the two remains contested.
3. The proportionality standard for lethal and less lethal weapons: There is no settled judicial test fixing when tear gas, water cannon, batons or pellets may be used, so proportionality is assessed after the event rather than fixed in advance.
4. Whether pellet weapons can be regulated or must be banned: One position accepts them as a less lethal alternative to firearms, and the other holds that an uncontrollable scatter pattern makes proportionate use impossible in principle.
5. Prohibitory orders as prevention against pre-emption: Section 163 is defended as a preventive power against imminent threats and contested as a routine instrument that forecloses assembly before any threat materialises.
6. Whether the narrowing of sedition survives its replacement: The Kedar Nath Singh (1962) requirement of incitement to violence narrowed the old sedition provision, and whether that narrowing automatically transfers to Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 is unsettled.
7. Command responsibility against individual liability: Accountability for crowd control failures is contested between the individual officer who used force and the supervising officer who ordered the deployment.
8. The evidentiary gap the dispute turns on: Without uniforms carrying visible identification, body worn cameras and a contemporaneous record of orders, allegations on both sides rest on competing testimony rather than on documented fact.

Challenges to the inquiry delivering accountability

1. A fact finding committee is not a prosecuting authority: The Committee reports to the Court and cannot itself frame charges or convict, so accountability depends on what follows the report. Eg. The Court has separately preserved the departmental power to take disciplinary action, which sits outside the Committee’s control.
2. Evidence degrades with time in crowd control cases: Injury records, video footage, control room logs and deployment orders have to be secured early or they cease to be reliable. Eg. Issue 4 arises precisely because officers using force were allegedly not identifiable by uniform or nameplate.
3. Prosecution of police officers requires sanction: Proceeding against a public servant for acts done in the discharge of official duty depends on prior sanction from the government that employs him. Eg. The requirement of prior sanction has historically been the reason many custodial and encounter cases do not reach trial.
4. Police is a State subject and the incidents spanned States: The Committee’s findings must be implemented by multiple State governments, each of which controls its own force. Eg. The mandate covers Jantar Mantar and other locations across the country during the same protest wave.
5. Compensation without a fixed scale invites disparity: Interim compensation awarded case by case, on both sides, has no published scale to anchor it. Eg. In Anita Thakur (2016) compensation was fixed by the Court itself in the absence of any statutory schedule for excessive force.
6. Monitored inquiries lose momentum once attention moves: A periodic assessment mandate depends on the Court continuing to list and act on interim reports over years. Eg. The Prakash Singh directions on police reform were issued in 2006 and remain incompletely implemented across States two decades later.
7. The unresolved statutory questions sit outside the Committee’s power: Issues 8 and 9 ask for constitutional thresholds on Section 163 and Section 152, which only the Court or Parliament can settle. Eg. The constitutional challenge to Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 is pending separately before the Supreme Court.

Conclusion

The Committee stands constituted with five members under an order dated 19 August 2026, and its immediate task is a First Interim Report on excessive force and on targeted violence against female protesters. The mandate is unusually wide, covering not only what the police did but also the statutory instruments through which protest was restricted, namely prohibitory orders under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 and prosecutions under Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. The constitutional question the order raises is whether the State can be held to a proportionality standard in crowd control when no such standard exists in written form. Until that standard is fixed in advance, each episode will continue to be judged after the fact by a fresh committee.

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