When the Allahabad High Court told the Supreme Court that its own judgments don’t bind in cases of habeas corpus

Imagine that a man has been imprisoned for more than two years in Uttar Pradesh on charges of killing his wife and their one-year-old daughter in what the police said was a dowry death. The trial court has already denied his request for bail, which is the primary procedure by which an undertrial prisoner seeks temporary release. His trial has started and witnesses for the prosecution are already testifying in court. However, this man’s advocates enter the Allahabad High Court and submit a habeas corpus petition, which is altogether different.   The majority of individuals have heard the expression but are unsure of its exact meaning. Habeas corpus, which is a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution seeking a High Court to order the production of a prisoner and to demand that the government demonstrate that it has the legal right to retain that person in custody, is, in essence, a constitutional emergency lever. Designed to prevent citizens from being imprisoned without due process, it is one of the most potent and fundamental instruments in any democracy’s legal toolbox. In India, it stems from the fundamental right of personal liberty that is protected by the Constitution’s Articles 21 and 22. The question posed by this man’s petition was deceptively straightforward, could he now argue that the initial ‘remand’ order issued by a magistrate when he was first arrested was unlawful and that this initial illegality corrupted everything that followed, despite the fact that he had been in jail for two years and his trial was already in progress? On June 1, 2026, the Allahabad High Court’s bench of Justices Siddharth and Vinai Kumar Dwivedi responded with a categorical ‘no.’ However, the Court’s explanation for that rejection has caused a stir in India’s legal community since the bench essentially ruled that a number of recent, well known Supreme Court rulings on this same issue are not binding precedents. A country drowning in habeas petitions It’s helpful to figure out why the Allahabad High Court was so furious that it took such a drastic measure before moving on to the legal drama. The bench outlined a pattern that has become frighteningly prevalent where accused people, not just this one man but many others, are filing habeas corpus petitions long after their bail has been denied, sometimes even after the Supreme Court has denied them bail, on the specific grounds that the arresting police officer did not follow the proper procedure at the time of the arrest. Every individual who is arrested has the right to know why they have been arrested straight away, according to Article 22(1) of the Constitution.  The bench referred to this as a ‘Pandora’s box‘ that had been thrown open, creating what it called a ‘chaotic situation’ in which accused people could now enter a High Court ‘at will,’ even in the middle of a trial, even when witnesses were testifying, and demand their release on the grounds that something had allegedly gone wrong on the day of their arrest. It stated that the floodgates were fully open.  The conflict: When the Supreme Court contradicts itself The Supreme Court urgently has to address the deeper crisis the bench recognised because its own judgements on this issue contradict each other. When a High Court hears a habeas corpus petition, it looks at the legal order that is actually governing the person’s custody at that moment, not the arrest order from two years ago, which has long since been replaced by the magistrate’s remand order, which has itself been replaced by the trial court’s order of cognisance, and so on, according to an earlier line of cases that were decided after a detailed examination of the entire criminal procedure system. According to this viewpoint, once a court officially takes care of a case by accepting the police chargesheet and issuing a cognisance order, the original remand becomes legally irrelevant to the question of whether incarceration is currently legitimate, and habeas corpus is no longer the appropriate remedy, bail is. Prabir Purkayastha (2024), Pankaj Bansal, Mihir Rajesh Shah (2025), Kasireddy Upender Reddy (2025), and the Supreme Court’s historic decision in Vihaan Kumar v. State of Haryana (7 February 2025) were among the most recent instances that adopted a far more rights-protective posture. According to these rulings, a violation of Article 22(1), failing to inform the accused of the reasons for the arrest, is a basic constitutional wrong that cannot be remedied by any future judicial orders. The accused may use habeas corpus at any time, in front of any court, to argue that since the arrest was wrong from the start, everything that stems from it is also wrong.   Both viewpoints are supported by a sound constitutional argument. The issue is that they can’t both be correct in the same situation at the same time. A doctrine called per incuriam This is where the Allahabad bench did something unusual, carefully justified, and, it must be acknowledged, legally bold. Per incuriam, which means through carelessness in Latin, is a well known but rarely applied theory that it applied to the Supreme Court’s recent judgements.   Every judgement made by the Supreme Court is enforceable by all Indian courts under Article 141 of the Constitution. This is the basis for the predictability of the entire Indian legal system. However, there is a known exemption, which operates in a way that the Supreme Court ruling is only fully enforceable if the bench took into account all pertinent previous judgements from the same court that were relevant to the issue at hand. When a Supreme Court bench reaches a verdict in a case without being presented with or taking into account a prior judgement that directly addressed the same issue, the subsequent judgement is referred to as per incuriam, meaning it was made without knowledge of binding precedent and is therefore not enforceable by lower courts. Consider it a rule that states that you cannot unintentionally overturn a well-established principle by failing to consider it. The Allahabad bench ruled that the recent cluster of Supreme Court decisions on illegal arrest and habeas corpus, the second set, did not appear to have taken into account the older, more detailed line of precedents that had sketched out the entire criminal procedure. Because of this, the bench ruled that those newer rulings are not binding precedents and hit by the principles of stare decisis, that is, they cannot overturn the more established, well reasoned position. It is important to note that this is not a High Court telling the Supreme Court that it is wrong rather, it is a High Court adhering to the Supreme Court’s own criteria about what constitutes binding precedent and determining that the more recent decisions did not meet those guidelines. Although it is still rare and is never done lightly, several High Courts have already taken similar action in cases of real, unresolvable conflict between coordinate Supreme Court benches. What it means for you, for the accused, for everyone. The practical message of the court’s decision is clear for anyone facing a criminal trial in Uttar Pradesh and, given the decision’s strong argumentative quality, possibly throughout India the window of opportunity to contest an unlawful arrest through habeas corpus is open from the time of arrest until the trial court formally takes cognisance of the chargesheet. The fact that the initial arrest may have been procedurally wrong cannot be used as a lever to get out of jail in the middle of the trial. Instead, the accused must request bail through the standard statutory procedure. The Court further ruled that the filing of a fresh habeas corpus petition is completely prohibited if the Supreme Court or the High Court has already denied bail. This is a partial relief for the police because their mistakes at the time of the arrest won’t haunt the trial process indefinitely. However, it is certainly not acceptable to take constitutional shortcuts because there is still a window of opportunity to challenge those shortcuts in the early stages of the proceedings. The decision is a practical act of self preservation for India’s criminal justice system, especially for courts like the Allahabad High Court that handle some of the world’s heaviest caseloads. It is a judicial refusal to permit the writ of habeas corpus to be transformed from an emergency safeguard into a strategic tool for permanently interfering with an ongoing trial. And, in a very polite way, this order serves as a mirror for the Supreme Court of India. Its own High Courts are now forced to choose between the Supreme Court’s contradictory voices, and they do so in full public view, in reasoned, published judgements. The Supreme Court itself must assemble a larger bench, examine its own fragmented jurisprudence on arrest and habeas corpus, and speak with a single, cohesive voice in order to permanently close that Pandora’s box. This is because no democracy can afford to leave open the question of when, how long, and on what procedural basis the state may lawfully take away someone’s freedom.