Andhra HC bars police from settling civil disputes and orders them to follow the DGP land-dispute circular
Hearing eight writ petitions together, Justice Maheswara Rao Kuncheam held that police have no jurisdiction to determine civil rights between parties, and left them free to act only where a cognizable offence is made out.
Eight sets of petitioners told the Andhra Pradesh High Court the same thing. Police had called them to stations, kept them there and pressed them to compromise civil disputes or pay money to the other side. On 4 November 2026 the court held that police have no jurisdiction to determine civil rights.
Justice Maheswara Rao Kuncheam disposed of the batch by a common order at Amaravati, with the consent of both sides. He directed the police not to interfere in, adjudicate or settle the civil rights of the parties without legal cause.
Eight petitions, one grievance
All the petitions were filed under Article 226 of the Constitution, and each sought a writ of mandamus. In Nellore, three petitioners, including a 74-year-old woman, challenged repeated calls to the I Town police station. They said the aim was to force a compromise in O.S. No. 569 of 2026 or a payment to two private respondents.
A Guntur resident challenged a police notice of 16 June 2026 issued by the Gajapathinagaram station in Vizianagaram district. He said no crime was registered against him and that the notice related to a money transaction with a private person.
Two petitioners in Kurnool made a similar complaint against the III Town police. A businessman in Visakhapatnam said a pre-litigation cell of the city police commissionerate was threatening him to pay a couple.
The Nandyal petitioner said police had held him for hours and pressed him to pay or register land in favour of two private persons. He said he had already complied with Section 41-A notices in two FIRs.
Two petitions concerned land. In Eluru, a couple farming 32 acres of fish tanks said police and revenue officials were helping private parties dispossess them, including 11.69 acres that are the subject of O.S. No. 58 of 2025 before the District Judge.
In Tada, a family said the station house officer was trying to clear 0.31 acres with bulldozers. They also asked for a disciplinary inquiry against him.
What the State told the court
Sri P. Ajay Babu, Assistant Government Pleader for Home, denied the averments in the affidavits. He said the police never called the petitioners to their stations and would not interfere in civil disputes between parties unless a cognizable offence was registered.
He then placed before the court the instructions the Director General of Police issued on 24 October 2025 on land disputes. The court extracted them in full.
The instructions say police must not take sides or interfere in civil title disputes. Where law and order is at risk, they must start preventive proceedings and tell the Executive Magistrate so that prohibitory orders issue promptly. Where there is trespass, cheating, forgery, assault or criminal conspiracy, they must register a case.
They also state that police play no role in deciding ownership or possession, which belong exclusively to civil courts and revenue authorities. Each district Special Branch is to keep a Land Dispute Risk Register, and the Collector and the Superintendent of Police or Commissioner are to review sensitive disputes every month.
Counsel for the private respondents argued that criminality was attached to the disputes and that they had rightly gone to the police. They did not dispute that civil suits were pending between the parties.
The question the court framed
The court recorded the common issue in these words.
“Whether the police have any jurisdictional powers to interfere or determine the civil rights of the parties, more particularly, pending the disputes before competent Civil Courts or statutory forums or not?” (para 6)
It began with what police are for. They must keep public order, prevent crime, protect life and property, and may take preventive steps when disturbance is feared. The duty to resolve civil disputes, the court said, is entrusted to the judiciary and not to the police.
Where a competent court or quasi-judicial forum has taken up a matter, no executive authority without adjudicatory powers can step into its place. Doing so is acting without jurisdiction. Judicial power, the court added, can be conferred only by the Constitution or a statute and cannot be assumed on an authority’s own motion.
The judge looked next at Section 164 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which corresponds to Section 145 of the old Code. It lets an Executive Magistrate decide who is in actual possession of disputed land when a breach of peace is likely, without deciding title. The property may be attached until a competent court decides.
Even that power, the court held, becomes very limited once a civil court is seized of the same property. A magistrate cannot run a parallel inquiry, and a police station cannot do what a magistrate may not.
The precedents it leaned on
The court relied on Mohd. Abid v. Ravi Naresh, where the Supreme Court held that proceedings under Sections 145 and 146 of the CrPC cannot continue once the civil court is seized of the dispute.
In Mohd Shakir v. State of UP, it noted, the Supreme Court held that even while dropping such proceedings a magistrate cannot comment on the parties’ rights.
It also cited Shailesh Kumar Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2025). There the Supreme Court said money cannot be recovered in a civil dispute by filing an FIR and seeking police help, and called that an abuse of process. The Supreme Court had also questioned a High Court order that tied quashing to a payment of Rs 25 lakh.
Two earlier Andhra Pradesh High Court rulings, cited by the petitioners, were extracted at length. J. Lakshmi v. Commissioner of Police held that where no crime is registered police cannot interfere in a civil dispute, and that they may act on a feared law and order problem only after registering a crime under Section 154 of the CrPC.
In G.B.C. Raj Gopal v. Government of A.P. (2014), the High Court said police officers lack jurisdiction over civil and property disputes and that the coercive power of the State may not be used to adjudicate disputes. The court said it would not multiply authorities on a point the Supreme Court has settled.
It also referred to Rohit Chaturvedi v. State of Uttarakhand (2026), in which the Supreme Court said executive action that affects personal liberty must meet the fairness and non-arbitrariness required by Article 21.
Police numbers and a colonial inheritance
The judgment goes beyond the legal point. It noted that Andhra Pradesh has about 166.18 police per lakh of population against the 222 per lakh it attributed to United Nations recommendations. Spending thin resources on matters outside police jurisdiction, the court said, is a futile exercise that in its view serves only the improper gain of some personnel.
The judge also said a station house officer who settles civil disputes on his own whims acts without jurisdiction and harms policing itself. Police are guardians of constitutional principles, he wrote, and not an authority above the people.
He quoted the scholar Upendra Baxi on the colonial police surviving decolonisation, and referred to the Supreme Court’s police reform directions in Prakash Singh v. Union of India and to the Model Police Act, 2006. The court called for people-centred, accountable policing.
The operative conclusion came in the court’s own words.
“police have no jurisdiction to adjudicate upon or determine the civil rights of parties” (para 29)
Order
The writ petitions were disposed of with four directions. The police were told not to interfere in, adjudicate, determine or settle the civil rights of the parties without legal cause. They were also told to follow the DGP’s instructions of 24 October 2025 strictly.
The parties are free to pursue their remedies before the appropriate civil courts or competent forums. If the police make out any cognizable offence against the petitioners, they may proceed in accordance with law.
There was no order as to costs, and pending interlocutory applications were closed.