In a comprehensive ruling aimed at curbing custodial abuse and procedural tampering, the Allahabad High Court has directed that closed-circuit television systems across all police stations must remain operational 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
A division bench comprising Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Achal Sachdev issued the directives on September 23 while invalidating the arrest of Raghvendra Dubey at the Sardhuwa police station in Chitrakoot district. Observing that police personnel appeared to have acted as recovery agents for a complainant in a sand-mining dispute, the bench ordered Dubey’s immediate release and awarded him Rs 10,000 in compensation for 24 hours of illegal detention.
Strict Procedures For Camera Downtime
To address technical breakdowns, the court instituted mandatory administrative safeguards to maintain continuous accountability whenever surveillance equipment malfunctions. Under the new guidelines, the Station House Officer must record a General Diary entry documenting the exact time of the hardware failure and identifying the official who received written notification of the issue.
The bench also instructed that the district Superintendent of Police must be alerted to fast-track technical repairs and record every step taken to resolve the outage. For the entire duration of a system failure, police personnel are obligated to contemporaneously enter the arrival, departure, and interrogation details of every suspect into the General Diary. Furthermore, officers must secure a signed acknowledgment receipt from each detainee or their next of kin upon release.
Surveillance Tampering And Conflicting Records
The bench expressed grave concern over what it identified as a recurring tendency among law enforcement officers to manipulate station surveillance systems. The judges highlighted stark contradictions between the formal records filed by the Sardhuwa police and the facility’s existing video logs.
Surveillance footage established that Dubey entered the Sardhuwa police station at 9:00 AM on July 13, 2026. He subsequently departed at 10:19 AM in the complainant’s vehicle accompanied by the Investigating Officer, before returning to the station at 8:24 PM.
Discrepancies In Police Documentation
These timestamps diverged substantially from the official documentation submitted by the force. The formal arrest memo recorded Dubey’s arrest at 3:30 PM, while the General Diary logged his placement in the lock-up at 6:41 PM. Additionally, internal recordings from three cameras positioned inside the police station were missing or deleted.
Although state representatives maintained that Dubey was apprehended under non-bailable warrants pursuant to a registered first information report, the bench dismissed the legality of the detention. The court ruled that the arrest memo was grossly deficient because it was witnessed solely by police personnel. Dubey had maintained that authorities abducted him from Asansol and transferred him to Chitrakoot as a result of an ongoing dispute over a sand-mining contract.
