In a firm judgment reinforcing democratic norms, the Gujarat High Court has struck down the Ahmedabad Police’s years-long practice of imposing back-to-back Section 144 orders – calling the state’s conduct “arbitrary, unjustified, and violative of fundamental rights”.
The message from the bench is clear: Gujarat Police cannot treat an emergency law as a standing rulebook.
The petitioners, who were booked for peacefully protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, told the court that from 2016 to 2019, Ahmedabad Police regularly invoked Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code – issuing prohibitory orders one after another, with barely a pause.
The judgment makes it clear that the city police had turned Section 144 – meant only for brief, exceptional situations – into a continuous restriction, resulting in a near-constant bar on public assembly.
08/12/2025