History Will Not Be Kind: Delhi Police and the Duty to Disobey Unlawful Orders

Date: 23-10-2026

When a police force is seen siding with power against the public it serves, the damage goes beyond a single protest. It erodes the trust on which law and order depends. Amid recent protests about election rigging in the capital, Delhi Police has faced that allegation, and the questions being asked deserve serious answers.

The Right That Needs No Permission

The Constitution is explicit. Article 19(1)(a) protects freedom of speech and expression, and Article 19(1)(b) protects the right to assemble peacefully and without arms. Indian courts have repeatedly held that dissent is not a threat to democracy but part of how it works.

A peaceful assembly does not become lawful because an official approves it. It is lawful because the Constitution says so. The police’s role is to facilitate it, manage traffic, and prevent violence from any quarter, not to decide whether citizens deserve to be heard.

What Protesters and Rights Groups Allege

Protesters, lawyers, and civil liberties organisations have made a series of serious allegations about the policing of demonstrations in Delhi:

• Use of pellet guns and tear gas against crowds.
• Lathi charges on unarmed, non-violent demonstrators.
• Mass detentions, including of women held late at night, which the law restricts.
• Allegations of misconduct against women like groping.
• FIRs filed on thin grounds, with protesters kept in jail for weeks, in some cases for little more than raising the national flag.

These are allegations, and each needs independent, transparent investigation. But the pattern as described, force against the unarmed and custody as a weapon of deterrence, is exactly what the Constitution was written to prevent.

Section 163 and the Blanket Ban

Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, which replaced Section 144 of the CrPC, allows prohibitory orders in urgent cases of apprehended danger. In Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020), the Supreme Court made clear that such orders cannot be used to suppress legitimate expression, must be proportionate, and must state reasons and be open to judicial review.

In Delhi these orders have become a routine tool: imposed over wide areas, applied in advance, and used to declare lawful gatherings illegal. When a safeguard meant for emergencies becomes a standing excuse, the exception swallows the right.

“Orders From Above”

The most common defence is that officers are simply following instructions. The principle behind it is ancient: a soldier or officer cannot be blamed for obeying a lawful command. But the same principle has a limit. An order that is manifestly illegal offers no protection to those who carry it out. Striking peaceful, unarmed citizens, detaining women at night against procedure, or arresting people without cause are not grey areas.

Conscientious refusal does not mean mutiny. In practice it looks like:

• declining to use force on peaceful, unarmed people;
• asking for lawful, written directions;
• recording and reporting illegal orders through proper channels;
• upholding every procedural safeguard for people in custody, especially women.

Officers across India have done this quietly, often at personal cost. They are the ones who kept faith with their oath.

Whose Money, Whose Uniform

Police salaries, vehicles, and equipment are paid for by public taxes, including those paid by the protesters themselves. The authority an officer holds is delegated by the public, not owned by the government of the day. When that authority is turned against the people who granted it, the institution becomes a kind of hired force rather than a public service.

The Family Question

Every officer goes home to a family. The question critics pose is simple: what would your parents, your spouse, or your children think of what they saw on camera? The person on the receiving end of a lathi is someone’s mother, someone’s son. Institutions are made of individuals, and individuals have to live with what they did.

The Cost of Defection

Nobody should pretend that conscience is free. A constable or sub-inspector who got into the force worked for it. In a country where lakhs compete for a handful of government posts, with success rates often quoted at one in several thousand or worse, a government job means a pension, a home, school fees paid and a family lifted. Asking someone to risk that is a serious thing to ask, and any honest argument has to begin by admitting it.

The risk is real. Insubordination can bring a suspension, a transfer to a punishment posting, a withheld promotion, a departmental inquiry or a poor service record. Officers who have spoken out in India have faced exactly these things.

But the fear is often larger than the reality, for three reasons.

Dismissal is not easy. Under Article 311 of the Constitution, a civil servant cannot be dismissed or removed without an inquiry in which they are told the charges and given a chance to defend themselves. Police forces also have their own disciplinary rules. An officer who refuses a manifestly unlawful order, such as using force on peaceful, unarmed people, stands on firm legal ground, and orders can be challenged before tribunals and High Courts. Courts have reinstated officers punished for acting lawfully.

Public attention is a form of protection. Punishing an officer who refused to beat peaceful citizens is a story the public does not forget. Today a single video, a post or a news report can bring lakhs of people to someone’s side. Lawyers offer free representation, citizens’ groups raise funds, and the pressure on authorities to back down is heavy. Isolated officers are vulnerable; officers whom the public knows by name are much harder to quietly sideline.

Disobedience comes in degrees. Defection need not mean a dramatic public refusal. Officers have many ways to stand on the right side, with very different levels of risk.

Direct but lawful refusals

• Declining to use force against peaceful, unarmed people, and saying clearly that no violence is taking place.
• Asking for written orders before acting on a directive that looks unlawful.
• Insisting on legal safeguards in custody: women detained only by women officers, no night detentions of women without lawful cause, medical examinations, and informing families.
• Refusing to sign a false or fabricated FIR, panchnama or statement.

Quiet, indirect support

• Keeping force to the minimum necessary, and ensuring the crowd has water, a safe exit and a clear route.
• Warning protesters about what is coming, such as a dispersal order or a deadline, so people can leave safely.
• Not overcharging: recording accurate facts in FIRs rather than exaggerating offences.
• Making sure detainees are released promptly, their families informed and their lawyers allowed access.
• Giving injured protesters access to medical help without delay.
• Preserving evidence honestly, including CCTV and body-worn footage, rather than letting it disappear.

Speaking up through proper channels

• Reporting an illegal order in writing to a senior officer, a Human Rights Commission, or a Police Complaints Authority.
• Giving truthful testimony in court or before an inquiry, even when it is uncomfortable. Honest witnesses matter more than any slogan.
• Joining or supporting police reform efforts, such as those pushing to implement the Supreme Court’s directions in Prakash Singh v. Union of India (2006), which sought to insulate police from arbitrary political pressure.

Collective strength

Individual courage is hard, but institutions change when many people refuse together. Associations of retired officers, unions where allowed, and groups of serving officers raising concerns through legal channels have more weight than any single voice.

The Honest Calculation

The choice is not simply between a secure job and a lost one. It is also between a career spent carrying out orders one knows to be wrong, and a career one can describe to one’s children without flinching. The law gives officers more protection than they usually assume, the public gives them more support than they expect, and the many small acts of decency above are available to almost everyone in uniform, at far lower risk than open defiance.

A uniform asks for obedience, but the Constitution asks for something more: that obedience end where unlawful violence begins.

The Verdict of History

Records survive. Videos circulate, court orders accumulate, and memories endure. Societies eventually judge their institutions by what they did when pressure came to abandon the public. History has treated those who defended the law at a hard moment with respect, and those who enforced injustice, whatever their orders, with something closer to shame.

Conclusion

Delhi Police has a choice: to be remembered as Dyer — who opened fire on a large, unarmed crowd gathered for the Baisakhi festival, firing approximately 1,650 rounds over ten minutes in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre — or to be remembered as a true patriot of the country and to stand with the people who are fighting to stop election rigging and make the process fully transparent.