Mere Involvement Of Accused In Demonstration Pursuant To Communal Flare-Up Won’t Ipso Facto Transform Into ‘Gang’: Supreme Court Quashes FIR Under UP Gangsters Act

The appeal before the Apex Court was filed against the judgment of the Allahabad High Court dismissing the Writ Petition filed by the appellants seeking quashing of the First Information Report under Section 3(1) of the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters & Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986.

The Division Bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta observed, “Mere involvement of the accused appellants in a demonstration pursuant to a communal flare-up, however serious, does not ipso facto transform the participants into a ‘gang’ without evidence of organised and continuous criminal activity. Moreover, the impugned FIR fails to distinguish adequately between the roles of the nominated accused persons.”

“The afterthought application of the UP Gangsters Act in the present case, in absence of any subsequent criminal conduct of the appellant, bears the hallmark of colourable exercise of power for purposes extraneous to the Act’s legitimate objectives”, it added.

AOR Mohammad Aslam represented the Appellant while AOR Namit Saxena represented the Respondents.

Factual Background

The appellant claimed to be a member of a political party in the State of Uttar Pradesh. Appellant 1 is a former two-time elected Chairman of the Nagar Panchayat, and Appellant 2 is his son. The incident dates back to the year 2022, when one Rikki Modanwal made a post on a social media platform in which he allegedly used language perceived as defamatory towards a particular religion. In response, several believers of that religion (including the appellants) assembled outside his shop, raising vociferous protests. The protests escalated into violence and acts of vandalism between two different religious groups.

Among the multiple FIRs filed, one FIR was registered by one Sonu Modanwal nominating 41 accused persons, included the appellants herein, for offences punishable under Sections 147, 148, 149, 427, 307, 323, 504, and 506 of Indian Penal Code, 18607 and Section 7 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013. Subsequently, the Inspector-in-charge filed the impugned FIR against the appellants herein and 39 other accused, under Section 3(1) of the UP Gangsters Act. The Appellants’ petition seeking quashing of the said FIR was dismissed, which led to the filing of the appeal before the Apex Court.

Reasoning

On the legal position concerning the determination of "gang" and "gangster" under the UP Gangsters Act, the Bench explained that the statutory scheme delineates that a "gang" constitutes a group of persons who, whether acting singularly or in concert, perpetrate the enumerated anti-social activities through the instrumentality of violence, threat, intimidation, or coercion with the manifest object of either disturbing public order or procuring undue temporal, pecuniary, material or other advantages.

“From the above exposition of law, a group of persons may be said to constitute a gang only when they, either singly or collectively, indulge in any of the anti-social activities enumerated in Clauses (i) to (xv) of Section 2(b), by means specified therein, or otherwise, and most importantly, with the object of disturbing public order, or securing any undue temporal, pecuniary, material or other advantage for himself or any other person”, the Bench said.

As per the Bench, there were crucial deficiencies and fundamental flaws in the impugned FIR. The FIR merely referred to an isolated incident involving allegations of vandalism at the shop following disparaging comments made about a particular religious belief by Rikki Modanwal, which the appellants followed. “The mere listing of multiple accused persons without demonstrating their organizational roles, command structure, or evidence of prior or continued coordinated criminal activities fails to meet the stringent requirements for establishing gang membership ”, it said.

The Bench was of the view that the impugned FIR and the gang chart failed to meet the essential threshold, as they rested largely on presumptive theories rather than presenting tangible material to establish the probability that the appellants were engaged in organized criminal activity as contemplated by the Act. With the trial in the previous FIR remaining inconclusive, compelling the appellants to undergo another prosecution under the UP Gangsters Act for the same set of allegations, would, as per the Bench, constitute a manifest abuse of the legal process and result in a gross miscarriage of justice.

It was further noted that the invocation of the UP Gangsters Act in the present matter would not withstand scrutiny even under the guidelines which emphasizes the need for rigorous assessment of the gravity of underlying offences, established patterns of criminal activity, and proper verification of criminal antecedents before invoking the Act. Thus, noting that the procedural and substantive thresholds prescribed under Sections 2(b) and 2(c) of the UP Gangsters Act had not been adequately met in the present case, the Apex Court allowed the appeal and quashed the FIR.

"However, we deem it proper to clarify that our observations and analysis on the foundational FIRs are strictly circumscribed to the limited purpose of evaluating the impugned FIR under the UP Gangsters Act and will not have any bearing on the two pending FIRs, namely, CC No. 294 of 2022 and CC No. 296 of 2022, which shall be dealt with on their own merits by the Courts concerned", it concluded.

Cause Title: Lal Mohd. & Anr. v. State of U.P. & Ors. (Neutral Citation: 2025 INSC 811)

Appearance

Appellant: AOR Mohammad Aslam , Advocates Shahid Azad, Mohd Shoaib,Mohd Asif Rander, Manoharan VV, Ashraf Yusuf Khan, Nazish Fatima, Mateen Ahmad

Respondents: AOR Namit Saxena, Advocate Ajay Singh

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