Allahabad High Court quashes an externment order under the Goondas Act
The petitioner had been externed from Gonda for six months on the basis of two cases, one of which had already ended in acquittal. The judge said the state was persistent in using the Act as a tool of oppression.
The Allahabad High Court has quashed an order by the Gonda district magistrate externing a man from the district for six months, observing that "the State is persistent in its approach of using the Goonda Act as a tool of oppression".
The petitioner, Zahid Ali, had challenged the May order invoking the Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Act, which was later endorsed by the Devipatan divisional commissioner.
What the order rested on
The district magistrate's order cited a police report stating that Ali was a habitual offender with two criminal cases against him.
The Gonda superintendent of police had reported that "the petitioner was a person of criminal nature and is involved in two criminal cases".
One case, lodged in the district in 2010, alleged that Ali and others had barged into a shop and assaulted, abused and threatened the shopkeeper. In the second, he faced charges of attacking and injuring a person, and was also accused of violating norms during the COVID pandemic.
The acquittal
Ali told the appellate authority — the divisional commissioner — that he had already been acquitted in one of the cases cited.
The court noted that although he had produced a copy of the acquittal order, the externment order still cited both cases, along with a beat information report pending against him.
That is the specific defect. An externment based on a person being a habitual offender rests on the cases said to establish the habit; if one has ended in acquittal and the order still counts it, the basis has not been reassessed.
What the judge said
Justice Subhash Vidyarthi, sitting singly, delivered the order on Thursday.
He began from the settled position on the statute. The courts have repetitively held that the Act is "a powerful tool for the control and suppression of the 'Goondas'", the order observed, and that it should be used "very sparingly in very clear cases of 'public disorder'" or for the maintenance of public order.
It went on to set out what the Act is not for: it "should not be allowed to be misused as a tool of oppression of innocent persons", and is "not intended to secure punishment of a person without his conviction for a substantial offence".
The judge then recorded the pattern he said the court was seeing. Numerous cases are being presented before the court indicating that the state is persistent in using the Act as a tool of oppression, the order said, and described the case before him as a glaring example of the abuse of the statute.
What the Act does
The Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Act allows a district magistrate to extern a person from a district for a set period, on the basis of a police report, without a criminal conviction.
It is a preventive power rather than a punitive one, which is what the judge's phrase about securing punishment without conviction refers to. The safeguard is that it be used sparingly and in clear cases of public disorder, which is the test the court applied here.
The procedural path
The order travelled through the full administrative chain before reaching the court. The district magistrate issued it in May. The divisional commissioner, as appellate authority, endorsed it — including after Ali had produced his acquittal order.
That the acquittal was before the appellate authority and the order stood anyway is what took the matter to the High Court.
What the judgment settles
The ruling quashes this externment order. The observations about the state's approach are the court's, recorded in a judgment, and they address a pattern the judge says is recurring before the bench rather than this case alone.
The state government's response is not recorded in this report.
