Illegal Preventive Detention — Allahabad HC Sets ₹25,000-a-Day Compensation Guideline (Chander Pal Singh v. State of U.P.)

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Overview

The Allahabad High Court has held that a specially-abled practising advocate was illegally detained for three days by the Ghaziabad Police under the preventive-detention provisions of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS), and awarded him ₹75,000 in compensation. Going beyond the facts of the individual case, the Division Bench issued state-wide guidelines capping personal bonds at ₹20,000, fixing compensation of ₹25,000 for every day of illegal detention beyond 24 hours, and directing that such compensation be recovered from the salary of the magistrate or police officer found responsible.

Case: Chander Pal Singh and another v. State of U.P. and others
Citation: Habeas Corpus Writ Petition No. 214 of 2026
Bench: Justice Siddharth and Justice Vinai Kumar Dwivedi
Date: Judgment reserved on 26 May 2026 and pronounced on 8 June 2026

Facts

The petitioner, an advocate with disabilities practising before the Allahabad High Court, was taken into custody by the Ghaziabad Police on 22 February 2026 over a neighbour’s complaint alleging that he had obstructed a passage by installing a gate. He was not produced before any Magistrate within the mandatory 24-hour period required by law; instead, he was produced before an Assistant Commissioner of Police the following day and sent to judicial custody under Section 151 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC) / Section 170 of the BNSS (arrest to prevent the commission of cognizable offences).

The next day, the petitioner and his nephew furnished a personal bond of ₹50,000 to keep the peace, invoking Sections 170, 126 and 135 of the BNSS — Section 126 dealing with security for keeping the peace in cases other than a breach arising from a dispute, and Section 135 with inquiry as to the truth of the information received by the Magistrate. Despite furnishing the bond, the petitioner was not released. It was only after he filed the present habeas corpus petition, and the High Court called for instructions from the State, that he was released on 25 February 2026. His nephew was released a day later, on 26 February.

During the proceedings, the Ghaziabad Police Commissioner filed a compliance affidavit stating that no person was currently in detention under these provisions. The Bench, however, recorded that the underlying report showed persons had earlier been arrested and kept in jail for several days at a time, and were released only after the Court’s intervention.

What the Court Held

1. The detention was illegal. The Bench held that Section 170 of the BNSS — the provision under which the petitioner was initially taken into custody — does not itself provide for the execution of any bond or the furnishing of any surety. Continuing to hold a person in jail after a peace bond has been furnished, without any default on the detainee’s part, was found to be without legal basis.

2. Preventive custody presupposes default in executing a bond, not the other way around. Relying on coordinate-bench rulings in Amit Jani v. State of U.P. and others (2020) and Shiv Kumar Verma and another v. State of U.P. and 3 others (Allahabad High Court, decided 11 June 2021), the Bench reiterated that an order of detention under Chapter VIII of the CrPC — carried forward in equivalent form under the BNSS — can be passed only in default of execution of a bond, and not otherwise. Since the petitioner had furnished the bond, his continued detention was a “flagrant violation of the right to liberty.”

3. A disturbing, state-wide pattern. The Court observed that despite an existing State Government policy dated 23 March 2021 that already provides guidance to District Magistrates, Executive Magistrates and Special Magistrates on handling matters of public peace, police officials and magistrates across Uttar Pradesh continue to act in a “highly irresponsible manner” — routinely sending persons to jail for days on the mere apprehension of a breach of the peace, and in practice insisting on bonds of ₹50,000 with one or two sureties of a like amount, a burden the statute itself does not impose.

4. Compensation is a public-law remedy, not ordinary civil damages. On the question of monetary compensation for the violation of the petitioner’s personal liberty by public servants, the Bench drew on the Supreme Court’s 2026 decision in Daudayal v. State of Rajasthan, which had itself traced the principle to the Court’s earlier ruling in Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa (1993): where the State fails in its public duty to protect a citizen’s fundamental rights, monetary compensation in the nature of “exemplary damages” can be granted under public law, distinct from a private-law action for damages.

5. Quantum and enforcement. Noting that the ₹25,000 figure fixed under the 2021 State Policy for such cases deserved to be enhanced now that the BNSS has come into force, and pending a revised policy from the State Government, the Bench fixed the petitioner’s compensation at ₹75,000 — calculated at ₹25,000 for each of the three days of illegal detention — payable by the State Government and thereafter recoverable from the salaries of the erring Magistrate and/or police officer, who are also to be subjected to disciplinary proceedings for dereliction of duty under their respective service rules.

6. Prospective guidelines. Pending a fresh State policy, the Court directed that, going forward, any person taken into preventive custody under the BNSS or the CrPC:

shall ordinarily be required to furnish only a personal bond (a signature bond, without deposit of any money) undertaking to keep the peace and maintain good behaviour, and no surety should ordinarily be insisted upon;
the amount of such personal bond should not exceed ₹20,000;
where the bond is executed on the date of detention, immediate release must follow;
if the detainee refuses to execute the bond, the refusal must be recorded in writing and through audio-visual means before any decision is taken to send the person to jail, and the person must thereafter be produced before the Magistrate on a date of the detainee’s choosing to enable execution of the bond;
for any detention that continues beyond 24 hours without such compliance, the State Government shall pay compensation of ₹25,000 per day, to be recovered from the salary of the Magistrate and/or police officer found responsible, after fixing liability through disciplinary proceedings.

Precedents Relied On

Daudayal v. State of Rajasthan, 2026 INSC 599 : 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 567 — Supreme Court decision awarding compensation for illegal continued detention despite a competent court’s release order, characterising such compensation as “exemplary damages” for breach of a public-law duty.
Nilabati Behera (Smt.) alias Lalit Behera v. State of Orissa, (1993) 2 SCC 746 — the foundational authority for constitutional-court compensation where the State fails in its public duty to protect a citizen’s fundamental rights.
Amit Jani v. State of U.P. and others (2020), Allahabad High Court — coordinate-bench ruling that a detention order under Chapter VIII CrPC can be passed only in default of bond execution.
Shiv Kumar Verma and another v. State of U.P. and 3 others, Criminal Misc. Writ Petition No. 16386 of 2020, Allahabad High Court (decided 11 June 2021) — coordinate-bench ruling to the same effect, on materially similar facts involving non-release despite furnishing of a personal bond.

Takeaway

This judgment does two distinct things. First, on the facts before it, the Bench applied settled Allahabad High Court authority — that a Chapter VIII detention order can be passed only where a person defaults in executing a bond — to hold a specific three-day detention illegal and to compensate the petitioner using the exemplary-damages framework traced through Daudayal back to Nilabati Behera. Second, and more significantly for future cases, the Court did not stop at compensating the individual petitioner. Finding a “disturbing trend” of police and magistrates state-wide disregarding an existing 2021 policy on preventive custody, it issued binding, prospective directions — a ₹20,000 cap on personal bonds, a presumption against sureties, mandatory audio-visual recording of any refusal to execute a bond, and a fixed ₹25,000-per-day compensation payable by the State and recoverable from the personal liability of the responsible official. The personal-liability and disciplinary-proceedings component is the sharpest departure from ordinary practice: it shifts the cost of unlawful preventive detention away from the public exchequer alone and onto the individual magistrate or police officer whose lapse caused it.

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