The Allahabad High Court has awarded Rs 1.25 lakh in compensation to Chandan Rajbhar, a resident of Deoria who was held illegally by police for five days. The court ordered Rs 25,000 for each day of his unlawful detention and directed that he be released immediately if he was not required in any other case.

A bench of Justices Atul Sreedharan and Achal Sachdev passed the order while allowing a petition filed by Gyanti Devi and two others, who had sought Rajbhar’s release. The court did not mince words about the conduct behind the detention. It said the investigating officer had displayed an arrogance of authority by taking Rajbhar into custody without following the legal procedure.

The investigating officer had displayed an arrogance of authority by detaining him without following the legal procedure.

How a Runaway Case Turned Into Five Days Without an Arrest

The trail starts with an FIR registered at Salempur police station in Deoria on July 18. It was filed under Section 87 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Suraksha Sanhita, a provision that deals with claims and objections to the attachment of property. The complainant, the mother of the third petitioner, alleged that Rajbhar had eloped with her 18-year-old daughter.

The petitioners told the court a very different story. Rajbhar and the complainant’s daughter had married at a Durga temple in Siwan, Bihar, and then moved to Pune, where they lived together as husband and wife. According to the petitioners, police personnel, accompanied by the woman’s father, reached the couple’s home in Pune on the intervening night of August 24 and 25 and took them into custody.

The couple was brought to the concerned police station on the intervening night of August 27 and 28. From there, Rajbhar says, his confinement stretched on without legal cover. He said he was illegally detained from August 28 to September 2, and his arrest memo was not prepared until September 2. Five days passed before the paperwork caught up with the custody.

An Inquiry Report That Admitted the Abuse

The most damaging evidence came from the state’s own side. The state counsel cited an inquiry report dated October 21, prepared by the circle officer. That report acknowledged that investigating officer Deep Narayan Yadav had deliberately taken Rajbhar into custody on August 28 and kept him in illegal confinement until September 2, when his formal arrest was recorded.

The admission did not stay on paper. The Deoria superintendent of police initiated departmental proceedings against the investigating officer on October 21, the same day the inquiry report was dated. The court took note of that follow-up action and said it was in the record.

The bench also praised the circle officer for his candour. It appreciated the honesty shown in disclosing the facts through the inquiry report. That praise stands in sharp contrast to the conduct the report describes, in which a police officer allegedly kept a man locked up for five days without the formal arrest that the law requires.

Who Pays and What Comes Next

The compensation is not the final word on the matter. The bench said the Rs 1.25 lakh paid to Rajbhar could be recovered from those found responsible for his illegal detention, but only after an inquiry establishes responsibility. It added that the state could carry out such a recovery if it chose to do so.

The court also said the harshest punishment should be considered for the investigating officer’s deliberate actions, if he is found guilty of the charges in the departmental inquiry. That makes the outcome of the internal process important. A finding of guilt would move the case from an admitted error on paper to a consequence for the officer who made the decision.

Rajbhar is not limited to the compensation awarded in this order. The court made clear that the payment would not prevent him from suing the police department separately for damages. That leaves the door open for a second legal fight, one aimed at the department rather than the individual officer.

The bottom line: A man was taken from his home in another state, held without a formal arrest for five days, and only freed because a petition forced the court to look at the record. The state’s own inquiry confirmed that the detention was deliberate and illegal. The compensation is real money, but the bigger question is how many people in similar situations never reach a courtroom at all.