Allahabad High Court quashes case against students booked for praying at restricted site

An Indian high court has thrown out criminal proceedings against two students accused of offering namaz at a site temporarily restricted by local authorities.

According to Scroll.in, the Allahabad High Court quashed the case against the students in Uttar Pradesh’s Sant Kabir Nagar district. They had been booked under Indian Penal Code provisions related to unlawful assembly and disobedience of an order “lawfully promulgated by a public servant.” The case had advanced to a chargesheet and a 2019 summoning order by a judicial magistrate before the students sought relief.

Justice Saurabh Srivastava noted the students had no criminal history and found their implication unjustified, per PTI as cited by Scroll. Their counsel argued the prosecution was essentially punishment for intending to pray according to their faith—one student was preparing for competitive exams, and even a “petty” criminal case can become a career-damaging bureaucratic scar.

The state’s argument, reported by Live Law and relayed by Scroll, was that certain places were notified as not permitted for namaz to maintain “law and order,” and the students allegedly insisted on praying there anyway. Local authorities can declare a space “restricted,” then treat noncompliance as a criminal matter, regardless of whether any concrete harm occurs.

The court’s reasoning is revealing. It reaffirmed that citizens are guaranteed the right to follow their faith in India’s “democratic and secular” setup. But it also added that, given the country’s “mixed culture,” citizens must follow a “yardstick” and “suggestions” in the form of directions issued by local administration to maintain communal harmony.

Even while quashing the prosecution, the court effectively endorsed the idea that bureaucratic orders—issued in the name of harmony—can legitimately constrain religious practice. The students were directed to follow future restrictions.

From a civil-liberties perspective, the win is procedural and immediate: the state doesn’t get to drag two students through years of court as a substitute for governance-by-consent. But the underlying architecture remains: broad police powers, vague public-order statutes, and local officials who can convert “instructions” into criminal exposure.

If India wants fewer communal flashpoints, criminalizing peaceful religious observance is a strange place to start. Yet that is often how states behave: they manage diversity by licensing it—then punish the unlicensed version.