The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday directed the Superintendent of Police, Farrukhabad, to register an FIR against an investigating officer (IO) after finding that additional particulars in the reasons for arrest column pertaining to an accused appeared to have been inserted subsequently.

The Court also declared the arrest of the accused-petitioner unlawful and ordered his immediate release while holding that the reasons for arrest and grounds of arrest had not been communicated to the him in accordance with law.

A Bench of Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Achal Sachdev observed that the investigating officer appeared to have committed an offence under Chapter XIV of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which deals with "false evidence and offence against public justice".

Briefly put, the bench was hearing a habeas corpus plea filed by petitioner-Mohd. Yaseen who was arrested on September 14, 2026, according to the arrest memo.

However, in his plea, he claimed that he had actually been taken into custody on September 13, when he had gone to the police station along with his lawyer to join the investigation into the death of the complainant's daughter.

The complainant's daughter had allegedly died by suicide on account of harassment by the petitioner. The concerned court had also rejected his bail application.

The High Court found that the arrest memo placed on record by the petitioner was deficient in material particulars relating to the reasons for arrest.

The State, however, submitted that the reasons for arrest had been separately prepared and supplied to the petitioner on September 14, 2026, and that the document purportedly bore his signature.

The Court examined the scanned copies of the documents produced by the State and compared them with the documents annexed to the habeas corpus petition.

It found that the arrest memo produced by the State was identical to the arrest memo supplied to the petitioner. However, the document containing the reasons for arrest was different.

The Court noted that the copy of the reasons for arrest furnished to the petitioner mentioned only Section 108 of the BNS (Abetment of suicide).

Interestingly, as the Court noted, the remaining particulars, that a case had been registered and that evidence had emerged indicating that the deceased had committed suicide on account of harassment allegedly meted out to her by the petitioner, were 'conspicuously' absent from the copy supplied to him.

The Bench observed that the only logical inference from these circumstances was that the petitioner had never been supplied with the reasons for arrest.

"The only inescapable inference is that the later part given to the reasons for arrest has been inserted by the investigating officer and subsequently the papers placed before the remand Magistrate and the papers placed before the learned court for deciding the bail application (bail application was rejected) reflect that an offence under Chapter XIV of the BNS relating to "false evidence and offence against public justice", appears to have been committed by the investigating officer", the Court observed.

Deprecating the police action, the Court observed that the IO had apparently fabricated evidence to satisfy the requirements relating to the reasons for arrest and the arrest memo, which had never been supplied to the petitioner, and to deny him relief during the remand and bail proceedings.

The High Court directed the Superintendent of Police, Farrukhabad, to forthwith get an FIR registered against the investigating officer under the relevant provisions of Chapter XIV of the BNS.

The Court further directed the SP to file a compliance report within 7 days. The matter has been listed next on November 16.