Police must serve the State, which endures, and not the party in government, which changes: Madras High Court

Justice N. Ramesh also says, “the measure of a police force is not how it treats the eminent when the press is watching, but how it treats the unknown when nobody is watching.” | Photo Credit: K. PICHUMANI

The Madras High Court on Monday (November 2, 2026) disapproved of the practice of police registering criminal cases against all those who criticise or abuse the ruling party and said, the police personnel must remember that they “serve the State, which endures, and not the party in government, which changes.”

Justice N. Ramesh said that the police seldom register cases against ruling party members, irrespective of the party in power, on the basis of complaints lodged by the opposition. He wrote: “An even hand between the ruling party and its opponents is not a courtesy the police extend; it is a condition of their constitutional legitimacy.”

The observations were made while granting anticipatory bail to a 60-year-old Greater Chennai Corporation Councillor, D. Sudha of the DMK, who had allegedly abused Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay. The judge agreed with her counsel, A. Damodaran, that the case does not require her arrest and consequent custodial interrogation.

Opining that initiation of criminal defamation proceedings would be the right course of action in cases of present nature, the judge said, an insult to a dignitary need not be converted into a public order crime so that the coercive machinery of cognisable investigation and threat of arrest could be deployed at once.

The judge said that the political discourse in the country was now conducted in substantial measure on social media, with all major political parties maintaining organised social media establishments, popularly called IT wings, whose daily work includes trolling and abusing the opponents.

Interrogation of Professor

The judge also referred to the incident in which Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) Associate Professor A. Kalaiyarasan was picked up by police from his Adyar residence in Chennai at 5 a.m. on October 28, 2026, after someone misused his photograph on a fake Instagram account to abuse a TVK MLA.

He highlighted that the policemen, in plainclothes, had picked up the economist without any authorisation or a First Information Report. He was let off after confirming that it was a fake Instagram account. Thereafter, a minister acknowledged the lapse and the Chief Minister invited the economist for a meeting.

“The grace shown at the end does not answer the questions being raised: On what verification were plainclothes officers sent to a citizen’s doorstep at dawn over a social media comment? And what action has followed against those who so acted?” Justice Ramesh’s order read.

It went on to state: “An apology, however high its source, is not accountability, and a remedy that depends on the Chief Minister’s personal intervention is not a remedy at all. Secondly, that gentleman’s eminence secured his release within hours and an audience at the Secretariat; a common citizen with no access to power, taken at dawn on the same mistaken complaint, would have tasted the lock-up, the remand and the long road of a trial before anyone asked whether the account was even his.”

The judge also wrote: “The measure of a police force is not how it treats the eminent when the press is watching, but how it treats the unknown when nobody is watching. It is against that measure that the handling of political speech—this case included—falls to be judged.”

While not condoning the abusive language such as “dog” and “corpse” used by the Corporation Councillor against the Chief Minister, the judge said, “Those who hold high office in a Republic hold it on the term that they will be criticised, lampooned and, not rarely, abused. The office is not so fragile that a Ward Councillor’s invective at a party meeting can shake it, and the State diminishes the office it claims to protect when it answers words of that kind with the machinery of arrest.”

He said: “A government confident of itself must meet criticism with argument, mockery with performance, and abuse— where it truly crosses the line—with the remedy the law of defamation provides. Magnanimity towards political speech is not a grace the State may extend or withhold; it is what the Constitution expects of those who hold power over their critics.”

The judge directed the Councillor to appear before the investigating officer daily until further orders, but refused to impose any gag order restraining her from making objectionable speeches in the future. “A court that gags a politician as the price of liberty does indirectly what Article 19 (freedom of speech and expression) of the Constitution forbids the State to do directly. The petitioner’s volunteered undertaking to exercise restraint is recorded; it is her promise, not my condition,” he concluded.

Published - November 02, 2026 11:57 pm IST