बेबाक · Editorial
When The State Polices The Street, The Law Must Police The State
From an advocate allegedly assaulted and paraded to a stone-laden truck near Jantar Mantar, the week tests whether India's coercive machinery still answers to due process.
A Week Of Reckonings
Read together, this week's dispatches describe one institution under strain: the rule of law. A Delhi court imposed life sentences for the 2020 killing of Intelligence Bureau staffer Ankit Sharma. The High Court of Meghalaya, on July 31, expressed serious concern that an advocate was allegedly assaulted and paraded by "non-state actors". The Delhi Police wrote to the platform X over content it called derogatory, malicious and defamatory toward constitutional heads. Families of personnel injured in the July 20 crackdown on a march to Parliament want their account heard in the House. These are not one story, but they share a spine: whether power, public and private, stays inside the law, and whether the machinery meant to protect the citizen remains open to scrutiny itself.
Order And Its Limits
The state's case is not frivolous. A capital preparing for Independence Day has barred UAVs, unmanned aircraft systems, paragliders, microlight aircraft and hot-air balloons across the National Capital Territory of Delhi, and no administration can treat a march on Parliament casually. Order is the precondition of every other freedom; a republic that cannot protect its own institutions cannot protect its citizens either. Injured police personnel are a real cost, and their families are right to want it acknowledged on the floor of the House. The instinct to secure the seat of democracy is legitimate. The difficulty begins where legitimate force ends and unaccountable force begins, and where restrictions and platform notices escape the test of proportion and review.
The Other Half Of The Ledger
Against that stands an equally serious claim: that the same machinery is not held to its own standard. The account was pressed that a stone-laden truck remained parked near Jantar Mantar till July 25, described as a "major contradiction" between police and counsel and a "massive security failure". A court had to flag the alleged parading of an advocate by "non-state actors", raising the question of whether the state could or did intervene in time. When a derogatory-content complaint travels swiftly to X, but an alleged security lapse near the legislature still awaits a full public answer, citizens may reasonably ask whether accountability flows in only one direction.
What The Record Shows
The specifics matter, because outrage without evidence is noise. The Delhi court's life sentences in the killing of Ankit Sharma show the judiciary can convict when process is followed. The High Court of Meghalaya's intervention shows courts still guard due process against mob assault. The Supreme Court, taking note of road accidents caused by stray animals, has directed the Centre and states to build a solatium mechanism. And the Lok Sabha was told AIIMS at Rewari stands at 64.85 per cent physical progress and AIIMS at Awantipora at 78 per cent, with both targeted for completion by December 2026. In each, an institution acted on record, named a wrong or a target, and demanded a result. Capacity, not rhetoric, is the measure.
The Verdict
The thread is not lawlessness but asymmetry. The courts are doing the heavy lifting of accountability: the High Court of Meghalaya guarding due process in the advocate's case, the Supreme Court ordering a compensation framework, and a trial court convicting in the Ankit Sharma killing. Meanwhile, the executive's own contested lapses, from a truck allegedly parked for days near Jantar Mantar to a crackdown that injured personnel, still require a fuller public answer. A republic cannot outsource all its accountability to the bench. When the judiciary must repeatedly name what the police or administration must explain, the balance the Constitution intended erodes quietly, and the citizen, not the institution, pays for the gap.
A Way Forward
The remedy is procedural and achievable. The episode near Jantar Mantar should be examined by a time-bound inquiry whose findings are placed on record, so the July 20 events are settled by evidence rather than rival claims. Complaints against citizens and lapses by the state should move on the same clock: if X can be written to within days, an internal review can report within weeks, recording the legal basis and route of review. The solatium mechanism the Supreme Court has ordered should carry published eligibility and payment timelines. Order and due process are not rivals. The state earns the first by submitting, visibly, to the second.
A republic is not kept safe by force alone; it is kept safe when the state visibly submits to the same law it enforces on the street.
Your Constitutional Rights
What the Constitution guarantees in this storyThe State shall take steps to separate the judiciary from the executive in the public services.
Directive PrincipleThe right to move the Supreme Court directly to enforce fundamental rights — called by Dr Ambedkar "the heart and soul of the Constitution." The courts can issue writs such as habeas corpus and mandamus.
Fundamental RightNo person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except by a fair, just and reasonable procedure established by law — read by the courts to include dignity, privacy, health, a clean environment and livelihood.
Fundamental RightThe State shall not deny any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws. Like must be treated alike; the law cannot be arbitrary.
Fundamental RightWhat this editorial rests on
Drawn from our live multi-newsroom feed — read the reporting at source.
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An editorial is the considered opinion of The Mudda desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions and actors; we do not endorse or attack any political party. "The Mudda's Ask" is a citizen's good-faith policy proposal, grounded in the Constitution — not the platform of any party. Translations are faithful — no fact is added in any language. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →