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Overview
The Allahabad High Court, Lucknow Bench, has held that proceedings under Section 3(1) of the Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Act, 1970, can validly be initiated on the basis of a report submitted by a Station House Officer (SHO), provided that report is forwarded through the Superintendent of Police (SP) to the District Magistrate, in keeping with Rule 3(1) of the Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Rules, 1970. A bench of Justice Rajesh Singh Chauhan and Justice Ram Manohar Narayan Mishra upheld a show-cause notice issued by the District Magistrate (Judicial), Unnao, rejecting the contention that a notice founded on such a report was procedurally invalid.
- Case: Faishal Beg v. State of U.P. through Principal Secretary, Home, Lucknow and 3 others
- Citation: 2026 LiveLaw (AB) 457
- Bench: Justice Rajesh Singh Chauhan and Justice Ram Manohar Narayan Mishra, Allahabad High Court, Lucknow Bench
- Date: 23 July 2026
Statutory Background
The Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Act, 1970, empowers a District Magistrate to act against a person found to be a “Goonda” within the meaning of the Act. Under Section 3(1), before any order of externment can be made, the District Magistrate must be satisfied that the person is a Goonda and that the statutory conditions are met — including that his movements or acts are causing alarm or danger, or that witnesses are unwilling to depose against him out of fear. Only then may the District Magistrate proceed by “notice in writing” disclosing “the general nature of the material allegations” and affording “a reasonable opportunity of tendering an explanation” before any removal order follows.
The Act’s machinery relies on the police for the underlying information that triggers this process — ordinarily the local police station’s records and reports. The Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Rules, 1970, frame the administrative channel through which such police information is expected to reach the District Magistrate. The petitioner’s case turned on whether a report that reached the District Magistrate after passing through the Superintendent of Police — rather than being submitted to the District Magistrate directly by the SHO — satisfied this framework.
Facts
The petitioner, Faishal Beg, was issued a show-cause notice under Section 3 of the Act by the District Magistrate (Judicial), Unnao. The information that led to the initiation of proceedings against him originated from the Station House Officer, Police Station Safipur, in Unnao district. The petitioner challenged the notice before the Allahabad High Court, Lucknow Bench, under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, contending — with reliance on the Allahabad High Court Full Bench decision in Ramji Pandey v. State of Uttar Pradesh, 1981 Cri LJ 1083 — that a notice resting on police information which had not reached the District Magistrate through the prescribed channel could not sustain proceedings under the Act.
What the Court Held
1. An SHO’s report can validly found Section 3(1) proceedings, if routed through the SP. The Court held that proceedings under Section 3(1) of the Act “can validly be initiated on the basis of a Station House Officer’s (SHO) report, provided it is forwarded through the Superintendent of Police (SP)” to the District Magistrate. Where the SHO’s report reaches the District Magistrate via the SP, that route satisfies the procedural chain contemplated for such information under the 1970 Rules.
2. This is consistent with the “letter and spirit” of Rule 3(1) of the 1970 Rules. The bench observed that routing the SHO’s report through the Superintendent of Police to the District Magistrate is in keeping with the “letter and spirit” of Rule 3(1) of the Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Rules, 1970 — treating the SP as the intended conduit between the local police station and the District Magistrate for information of this kind, rather than requiring the SHO to approach the District Magistrate directly.
3. The show-cause notice against the petitioner was upheld. Applying this reasoning to the facts, the Court found no infirmity in the notice issued to the petitioner by the District Magistrate (Judicial), Unnao, and declined to interfere with the proceedings initiated against him under Section 3 of the Act.
Precedents Considered
- Ramji Pandey v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Ors., 1981 Cri LJ 1083 (Allahabad HC, Full Bench) — the petitioner relied on this decision, which holds that a Section 3(1) notice under the Act must set out the “general nature of the material allegations” in substance, and that merely listing FIRs or convictions without more does not satisfy the requirement of strict compliance demanded of a statute restricting personal liberty. The present case did not concern the adequacy of the notice’s contents, which was the subject of Ramji Pandey, but the separate, procedural question of whether the source and routing of the underlying police information was itself valid.
Takeaway
This decision addresses a narrow but recurring procedural objection in Goondas Act litigation: does it matter, for the validity of a Section 3(1) notice, whether the triggering police report reached the District Magistrate directly from the local Station House Officer or after passing through the Superintendent of Police? The Allahabad High Court’s answer is that the SP-routed channel is not just permissible but is the very channel Rule 3(1) of the 1970 Rules contemplates — so a notice founded on such a report is not vulnerable to challenge on that ground alone. Read alongside the Full Bench’s holding in Ramji Pandey, the combined position is that what matters for a Section 3(1) notice is, first, that the underlying report reaches the District Magistrate through the prescribed administrative channel, and second, that the notice itself discloses the material allegations in substance — a bare recitation of case numbers, without either of these safeguards, remains vulnerable to challenge.
Useful Resources
- LiveLaw — UP Goondas Act: Allahabad HC Upholds Notice Based On SHO Report
- Indian Kanoon — Ramji Pandey v. State of Uttar Pradesh and Ors. (1981)
- Indian Kanoon — Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Act, 1970
- India Code — Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Act, 1970
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