New Delhi: Coming down heavily on the seniormost official of the Uttar Pradesh government’s home department, Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Sanjay Prasad, for the “lackadaisical quality” of criminal investigations being carried out in the state, the Allahabad High Court has said that “helplessness” shown by him in a year-old case of cheating and criminal breach of trust cannot be appreciated in any manner.
In this case, a division, or two-judge, bench rebuked Uttar Pradesh officials for filing a “completely casual affidavit” while acting on the plea of a woman who had approached the court for a proper investigation into her criminal case, registered about a year ago.
Prasad, a 1995-batch IAS officer, currently oversees several key portfolios in the Uttar Pradesh government, including the home department, information, vigilance, confidentiality, visa and passport-related matters. Considered one of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s most trusted civil servants, he is also posted in the Chief Minister’s Office and is widely seen as a key figure in the state administration.
The authorities are bound to investigate a First Information Report (FIR) as soon as it is lodged, but in this case, the court said that although an assurance was given to the court in May last year by the police, the matter still stood as it is.
The only exception were the two arrests made in this case, and that too, only after the Allahabad High Court passed a detailed order on 13 April this year. This, according to the court, spoke volumes about the conduct and about the quality of the investigation.
“Despite an assurance being extended to this court on 23.05.2025, the matter stands as it stood on the said date with the exception of two arrests having been made and that too, strangely only after this court has passed a detailed order on 13.04.2026, the arrests having been made on 17.04.2026 and 20.04.2026,” the court said in its 20 May order, pointing out that this reflected on the quality of the investigation.
The court is set to hear the case again on 15 July, and has directed the Additional Chief Secretary (Home) to file a fresh affidavit along with complete details of the investigation as the previous affidavit he presented suffers from gaps and “incongruities”. It clarified that the officer had failed to give a proper explanation in his previous personal affidavit, giving the impression that he “does not even care about the orders which are being issued by this court”.
What the case was about
In the present case, a woman named Gayatri Devi had approached the Allahabad High Court seeking a fair and proper investigation in connection with an FIR registered in Lucknow for offences of criminal breach of trust, cheating and criminal intimidation.
Gayatri Devi had told the court that despite lodging her complaint back in January last year, the authorities had failed to proceed in a fair and impartial manner, causing her to run from pillar to post for redressal of her grievances.
Subsequently, the court required the Investigating Officer (IO) to appear before the court along with the entire case records in the case. Significantly, on 23 May the court passed an order, which recorded the IO’s assurance that Gayatri Devi’s grievances will be taken care of in three days.
The state government’s lawyer argued in court that two accused persons were arrested and charged with criminal breach of trust after the FIR was lodged.
Authorities rebuked
Taking note of the delay in this case, the court said that the authorities should have shown some alacrity in the matter, and taken the investigation to its logical end, as opposed to “sitting around and twiddling their thumbs day in and day out”. Such conduct went against the assurance extended by the authorities to this court in May, last year the bench observed.
“As such, it was in the fitness of things that the authorities should have shown some alacrity in the matter and should have taken the investigation to its logical end instead of sitting and twiddling their thumbs day in and day out which conduct of the authorities would be against their own assurance,” the court said in its 13 April order.
The court had also then directed that if a personal affidavit is not filed in the case by the Station House Officer on the status of investigation, then the Additional Chief Secretary (Home), Government of Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow shall appear in person along with the entire records to assist the court and show cause as to why action should not be initiated against him and the other subordinate officials for showing a lackadaisical attitude in this case.
Following this, an affidavit was filed by the authorities, causing the court to take notice of it in its 29 April order, and say that the affidavit “did not contain the details” pertaining to the action taken against the accused.
“Additional Chief Secretary has filed his personal affidavit, which again admittedly indicates the lackadaisical attitude and the helplessness on their part in tracing out the four accused,” the court noted in its 20 May order, directing the affidavit be filed again.
“If this is the status of a personal affidavit, which is to be filed by the Additional Chief Secretary (Home) on the specific directions by the court, “consequently the fate and status of the other investigation/matters can well be understood”, the court noted, listing the matter for 15 July.
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Not the first time
This is not the first time that the Allahabad High Court has come down heavily on ACS (Home) Sanjay Prasad’s conduct. On 3 June this year, Justice Vinod Diwakar also took Prasad to task while dealing with the case of a 15-year-old missing girl, who disappeared in June last year. A month later, an accused was arrested in connection with the incident.
The court, however, found that the guidelines established by the Subhash Chandra judgment, where the court had prescribed comprehensive standards for quality of investigation, chargesheet preparation and mandatory prosecutorial review, was not being complied with.
After noting serious concerns about the manner in which the investigation was proceeding, the court asked the officials to examine several chargesheets from 10 different districts and check if the 2025 guidelines were being complied with.
The court found the Subhash Chandra guidelines had not been uniformly adhered to, and that a pattern of systemic non-compliance was disclosed, leading the court to ask the ACS (Home) to file a personal affidavit explaining persistent non-compliance.
Rather than explaining the non-compliance with the court’s directions, the Additional Chief Secretary (Home) told the court that the Home Department was challenging the Subhash Chandra judgment before the Supreme Court.
“The Home Department has decided to file a Special Leave Petition and, on that basis, a request was made that this court may refrain from passing further orders concerning compliance with the directions so issued until the matter was considered and decided by the Supreme Court,” the court noted.
By way of a 25-page-order, the court said that it found it difficult to “overlook the conduct of Shri Sanjay Prasad, IAS (DR 1995), Additional Chief Secretary (Home), Government of Uttar Pradesh, as it kept waiting for any order of the Supreme Court in the challenge to the Subhash Chandra judgment for three months but to no avail.”
“The conduct of Shri Sanjay Prasad… reflects a deliberate and calculated attempt to undermine the authority of this court by projecting the proposed Special Leave Petition as a basis for seeking restraint in the enforcement of judicial directions, while simultaneously failing to pursue the said remedy with any degree of diligence or bona fides,” the court noted.
Such conduct, if left unaddressed, would render the orders of constitutional courts nugatory “at the hands of recalcitrant administrative officers,” the court said, adding that it would set a precarious precedent for how the executive treats judicial directions concerning accountability and police reforms.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)