Punjab & Haryana HC Upholds Acquittal of Dera Sacha Sauda Supporters Charged with Sedition and Arson at UHBVN Office

No Test Identification Parade, FSL finding no petrol traces, a hostile principal witness, and an irrelevant Section 144 order led the Division Bench to affirm the trial court’s acquittal.

A Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court at Chandigarh, comprising Justice Vinod S. Bhardwaj and Justice Sukhvinder Kaur, has dismissed the State of Haryana’s appeal challenging the acquittal of four accused persons tried for sedition, arson, and causing damage to public property following a 2017 attack on the office of the Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam Limited at Kalayat, District Kaithal. The Sessions Judge, Kaithal had acquitted the respondents on 23 September 2019. On appeal, the Division Bench found the trial court’s reasoning sound across every material point: identity was never established, forensic evidence contradicted the prosecution’s arson theory, the principal witness turned hostile, and the Section 124-A charge was not sustained by the conduct alleged. The appeal was dismissed and the acquittal affirmed.

The Incident and the Charges

On 25 August 2017, Sandeep Bharat, Sub-Divisional Officer of UHBVN at Kalayat, filed a complaint stating that at around 4:15 p.m. a group of approximately 14–15 persons arrived at the office premises carrying lathis, dandas, gandasis, and bottles containing petrol. The complainant and his colleagues fled. The group allegedly entered the office, caused extensive damage to computers, printers and furniture, and set the premises on fire. The Fire Brigade subsequently extinguished the fire. According to the complaint, the persons were raising slogans in support of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, head of Dera Sacha Sauda, in protest against a judgment rendered against him.

FIR No. 199 dated 25 August 2017 was registered at Police Station Kalayat under Sections 124-A, 188, 427, 436, 450 and 120-B read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and Sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984. Charges were eventually framed under Sections 188, 436, 427, 450 and 124-A read with Section 34 IPC, and Sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984.

Four persons were put to trial: Dharampal and Jasbir (arrested during initial investigation), Shiv Kumar alias Babar (arrested on 29 August 2017), and Balbir (arrested on 2 October 2017). All pleaded not guilty. The prosecution examined thirty witnesses and produced an extensive set of documentary exhibits including disclosure statements, seizure memos, site plans, FSL reports, and government sanction orders for prosecution under Section 124-A IPC.

Why the Trial Court Acquitted

After hearing arguments and appreciating the evidence, the Sessions Judge concluded that the State had failed to prove its case against any of the accused and acquitted all four. Haryana then moved the High Court, first filing CRM-A-161-2021 for leave to appeal and thereafter the substantive appeal CRA-AD-276-2026.

The State’s Case on Appeal

The State, represented by Senior DAG Mr. Paras Talwar, argued that the trial court had misappreciated and misinterpreted the evidence. It submitted that cogent oral and documentary evidence had established the respondents’ involvement, that foundational facts and statutory ingredients of the offences stood proved, and that trivial discrepancies should not have been allowed to overshadow substantive prosecution evidence. The State urged that the acquittal be set aside and the respondents convicted.

How the Division Bench Analysed the Evidence

Justice Vinod S. Bhardwaj, writing for the Bench, noted at the outset that even when asked to point to specific documents or excerpts of witness testimony that could fault the trial court’s findings, State counsel was unable to do so. That inability set the tone for the detailed analysis that followed.

Absence of identification at the earliest stage. None of the prosecution witnesses named any of the respondents in the FIR itself. For accused Balbir Singh specifically, no prosecution witness named him at any point during investigation or trial. The only material connecting him to the offence was a disclosure statement made by a co-accused. The Bench observed that the disclosure did not result in discovery of any new fact or incriminating article attributable to Balbir Singh. Without a discovery flowing from it, the disclosure remained a confession made in police custody and was inadmissible as substantive evidence. Similarly, the name of Shiv Kumar alias Babar did not appear in the earliest complaint (Ex.PB) or in the Section 161 Cr.P.C. statement of Exemptee Assistant Sub-Inspector Satyawan Sagar.

The hostile principal witness. PW-25 was projected as the principal identifying witness. Before turning hostile, he identified Jasbir Singh, Dharampal, and Shiv Kumar alias Babar in court. However, he admitted he could not specify which accused was carrying which weapon. After being declared hostile, he introduced a materially different version: attributing petrol bottles to Jasbir Singh and Dharampal, and a danda to Shiv Kumar alias Babar. This contradicted his earlier Section 161 statement, in which Shiv Kumar alias Babar was alleged to have carried a gandasi. The witness also introduced a fresh allegation—that Shiv Kumar had broken glass panes of both the Rest House and the UHBVN office—when the prosecution had not established any damage to the Rest House at all. Two mutually inconsistent Section 161 statements attributed to the same witness were on record, seriously impairing credibility and the accused’s ability to cross-examine effectively.

No Test Identification Parade. The accused were strangers to the complainant and all prosecution witnesses. No Test Identification Parade was conducted. The accused were identified for the first time when they appeared in court. The Bench held that where identity forms the foundation of the prosecution case and witnesses have no prior acquaintance with the accused, a TIP assumes considerable importance. Its omission materially weakened the evidentiary value of the dock identification.

Contradictions in arrest circumstances. The prosecution case suggested Jasbir Singh and Dharampal were apprehended at the place of occurrence. The Investigating Officer, however, deposed that both were arrested several hours later from the Community Health Centre, Kalayat. No explanation was offered for how they came to be at the CHC or why they were not arrested on the spot. The Bench also found it inherently improbable that accused allegedly carrying weapons and petrol bottles in their hands would discard everything near the place of occurrence before being apprehended, with none of those weapons recovered at the spot.

Forensic Science Laboratory report. The prosecution sought to establish mischief by fire through the allegation that petrol bottles were used to set the UHBVN office ablaze. The FSL Madhuban report (Ex.PW27/A) did not detect any traces of kerosene, petrol, diesel, or their residues on the burnt articles recovered from the scene. This directly contradicted the prosecution’s arson theory and constituted a material gap in the evidence.

PW-16 as an interested witness. The Bench examined PW-16’s testimony with caution. Shiv Kumar alias Babar resided in village Godra Patti, Boher, and its Sarpanch was PW-16’s cousin. Shiv Kumar had sought information against that Sarpanch under the RTI Act. PW-16 himself admitted he was not on visiting terms with the accused, yet identified him. The Bench found PW-16 to be an interested witness. There was also an unexplained irregularity: case property allegedly recovered at the instance of Dharampal was signed by Jasbir, not Dharampal. The prosecution offered no explanation, and the case property was never produced before the court, preventing it from being linked to either accused.

Section 188 IPC: wrong Section 144 order. For an offence under Section 188 IPC, the prosecution must establish that a competent public servant had promulgated an order prohibiting certain conduct, and that the accused violated it. The prosecution produced Ex.PAD, an order under Section 144 Cr.P.C. promulgated by the District Magistrate, Kaithal. That order was dated 21 August 2018—more than ten months after the incident of August 2017. The Bench held that an order issued after the alleged offence could not form the basis of a Section 188 charge arising from that offence.

Section 124-A IPC: sloganeering is not sedition. The Bench addressed the sedition charge directly. It held that a violent protest may amount to rioting, but violence alone does not constitute bringing the government into hatred or contempt within the meaning of Section 124-A. Sloganeering against the government or its organs in an elected democracy does not, by itself, sustain a sedition charge. “A frustration or dis-satisfaction or even outrage is not a disaffection or hatred.” The Bench observed that where a charge carries grave consequences and harsh punishment, the ingredients must be strictly established. On the evidence, the conduct amounted to no more than an expression of dissent.

The Standard for Interfering with an Acquittal

The respondents, represented by Senior Advocate Mr. Hemant Bassi with Ms. Gursimran Kaur and Ms. Saloni Chhabra, had argued that the scope of appellate interference with an acquittal is limited. The Bench accepted this framing. It held that an acquittal carries a reinforced presumption of innocence, and that the appellate court would not substitute its own view merely because another view may also be plausible. Interference is warranted only where the findings are patently illegal, perverse, manifestly unreasonable, or result in a clear miscarriage of justice. The Bench found none of those conditions met. It observed that the trial court had not acquitted on minor discrepancies but on “substantial contradictions, material omissions, doubtful recoveries, lack of reliable identification, inconsistent investigation, absence of forensic corroboration and failure of the prosecution to establish the statutory ingredients.”

The Bench also noted the prosecution’s fundamental evidentiary failure: “The burden lay squarely upon the prosecution to establish the guilt of the respondents beyond all reasonable doubt but it has failed to cross over from a broad suspicion of the accused ‘may have been’ involved to the legal requirement of an accused ‘must be involved’.”

Outcome

Leave to appeal in CRM-A-161-2021 was granted. The substantive appeal, CRA-AD-276-2026, was dismissed. The judgment of acquittal passed by the Sessions Judge, Kaithal on 23 September 2019 was affirmed. The order was pronounced on 2 July 2026 and marked as a speaking and reasoned judgment.