The Supreme Court has held that the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986 is “stillborn” because it prescribes punishment for a “gangster” without creating any distinct criminal offence.
A Bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran ruled that the missing offence could not be created through the 2021 Rules or a gang chart—an administrative record prepared by the police and approved by senior police and district officers.
“The menace of criminal gangs is to be curbed, but the end does not justify the means especially in enacting a penal law, interfering with the liberty of citizens.”
Why it matters. The ruling goes beyond defects in the two prosecutions before the Court. The Bench located the problem in the Act itself: Section 2 merely defines a “gang” and “gangster”, while Section 3 punishes a gangster without first declaring what act or omission constitutes an offence under the Act. On the statute’s present wording, the Court said, proceedings initiated under it cannot survive.
Two advocates, two gang charts
The first appeal was filed by Shiv Pratap Singh alias Chinu, a practising advocate involved in a dispute over elections to the Bar Association, Fatehgarh.
In July 2023, the Disciplinary Committee of the Bar Council of Uttar Pradesh debarred Singh and another advocate, Sanjeev Paria, from practice for 15 years and directed that a police complaint be lodged. The High Court subsequently stayed that direction, while the Bar Council of India declared the State Bar Council’s orders a nullity on August 31, 2024.
Meanwhile, the police registered FIR No. 41 of 2024 on February 13, 2024 under the Gangsters Act. The accompanying gang chart named Paria as gang leader and Singh and Dr Anupam Dubey as members. The Supreme Court found that the first information statement contained “general allegations without any specifics”.
A charge sheet was filed against Singh on February 12, 2025. The Allahabad High Court rejected his application under Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which gives High Courts inherent power to quash criminal proceedings.
The second appeal was filed by advocate Himanshu Srivastava. Proceedings under the Gangsters Act had been initiated against him, his brother and his father. FIR No. 740 of 2022 was founded, so far as Srivastava was concerned, on one pending criminal case under the Penal Code and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The common question was whether prosecutions under Sections 2 and 3 of the Gangsters Act could continue when the Act itself did not create an offence.
The reasoning
A definition is not an offence. The General Clauses Act defines an “offence” as an act or omission made punishable by law. But Section 2 of the Gangsters Act only defines a gang by reference to activities already punishable under the Penal Code and other statutes.
“Looking at the enactment, which is up for scrutiny, we cannot find any offence having been created,” the Bench held.
Those underlying activities can be independently prosecuted under the respective penal laws. The Gangsters Act, however, seeks to impose an additional punishment based on the person’s supposed status as a gangster without declaring membership of, association with or participation in a gang to be a distinct offence.
The Court described this omission as making the penal enactment “stillborn”.
Rules cannot manufacture the missing crime. The 2021 Rules prescribe the preparation, recommendation and approval of a gang chart. The person’s status as a gangster and exposure to imprisonment under Section 3 therefore depends upon the conclusions of police and administrative officers.
But subordinate legislation, meaning rules made by the executive under authority delegated by a statute, cannot perform the legislature’s essential task of creating an offence.
“The creation of crime, or to make an act or omission subject to penal consequences as an offence, is essentially a legislative function and it cannot be thrown away and left to sprout in the thickets of subordinate legislation.”
The Rules consequently travelled beyond the power conferred by Section 23 of the Act, the Court held.
No punishment without an offence in law. The Bench invoked the principle nullum crimen nulla poena sine lege there can be no crime or punishment without a penal law which it said is embodied in Article 20(1) of the Constitution.
The Act defines the status of a gangster and attaches punishment to it, while leaving the process of determining that status to the executive. This, the Court said, conferred “unbridled and unfettered power” upon the government.
The Act permits prolonged pre-trial custody and imposes stringent bail conditions. Yet, according to the Court, once an accused is placed in a gang chart, little remains for the Special Court to determine beyond imposing the prescribed punishment.
“The end result of a trial under the U.P. Act is a foregone conclusion, a statutory imprimatur to punish,” the Bench observed, comparing the mechanism to the proverb: “Give a dog a bad name and hang him”.
The Court noted that earlier Supreme Court decisions had considered other parts of the Act. Shraddha Gupta v. State of Uttar Pradesh, for instance, held that a single crime could be sufficient to invoke the Act. But whether the Act created any offence at all had remained undecided by the Supreme Court.
The Bench also disagreed with the reasoning of the Allahabad High Court’s Full Bench in Ashok Kumar Dixit v. State of U.P., which had rejected the objection that the Act punished a person merely for their status.
At the same time, the Supreme Court expressly clarified that it was not deciding every constitutional challenge to the Act.
The judgement
The Supreme Court allowed both appeals and quashed:
- Charge Sheet No. 1 of 2025 arising from FIR No. 41 of 2024 registered at Fatehgarh Kotwali; and
- Sessions Case No. 73 of 2024 arising from FIR No. 740 of 2022 registered at Police Station Loni Border, Ghaziabad Rural.
Both proceedings had been initiated under Sections 2 and 3 of the 1986 Act.
The appellants must be released immediately if they are in custody and are not required in any other case. If already on bail, their bail bonds stand cancelled.
The Court made three limits to its ruling clear. It did not adjudicate all constitutional objections to the Act; it did not uphold comparable Gujarat or Maharashtra organised-crime statutes merely by distinguishing them; and it did not quash charges under the Penal Code or other penal laws. Those proceedings may continue independently under the applicable statutes.