Dispersing an unlawful assembly: BNSS 148–151

Most magisterial work is paper. Sections 148–151 are the exception: this is the jurisdiction you exercise standing in the road, between a crowd and a police line, with minutes to decide and years of scrutiny to follow. The law here is short; the discipline around it is everything.

The ladder of force

1. Command to disperse — s. 148. Any Executive Magistrate, or the officer in charge of a police station, may command an unlawful assembly — or any assembly of five or more persons likely to cause a disturbance of the public peace — to disperse, whereupon its members must disperse. The command comes first, audibly, and on record: who gave it, in what words, at what time.
2. Civil force — s. 148. If the assembly does not disperse, or conducts itself so as to show a determination not to, the EM or officer may use civil force to disperse it, may require the assistance of any male person (not being a member of the armed forces) for the purpose, and may arrest and confine members in order to disperse the assembly or to punish them according to law. “Civil force” is the police line: lathi-charge, tear gas, water cannon.
3. Armed forces — s. 149. If the assembly cannot otherwise be dispersed and it is necessary for the public security that it be dispersed, the Executive Magistrate of the highest rank who is present may requisition the armed forces. The officer commanding uses as little force and does as little injury to person and property as is consistent with dispersing the assembly and making the arrests the Magistrate requires. Both statutory conditions must genuinely exist; this is the last rung, not a shortcut past a tired police line.
4. Armed-forces officers acting alone — s. 150. A commissioned or gazetted armed-forces officer may disperse an assembly on his own authority only when the public security is manifestly endangered and no Executive Magistrate can be contacted — and must fall back under a magistrate’s direction the moment communication becomes practicable, obeying it if the magistrate can still be complied with.

The good-faith shield: s. 151

No prosecution lies against any person for anything purporting to be done in good faith under ss. 148–150 except with the sanction of the Central Government where the person is an armed-forces officer or member, and of the State Government in every other case — and the section deems acts done in good faith under these provisions to be no offence. Read the shield correctly: it covers good-faith acts, which is precisely why the record of what you saw, ordered and wrote at the spot matters. The protection follows the discipline, not the uniform. An unwarned, disproportionate charge is outside the shield no matter who signed for it.

The magistrate at the spot

During a serious flare-up the practice — embedded in every police manual — is that the EM is physically present at the sensitive point and it is the magistrate who authorizes escalation: the lathi-charge, the tear gas, and in extremis firing. The standing rules are constant: minimum necessary force, proportionate to the threat; a clear warning before each escalation, with time for the crowd to obey it; force directed at dispersal, not punishment, aimed to deter rather than injure where possible; force stopped the moment the object is achieved; and the magistrate’s presence and written authorization on record, with times noted. The written authorization can be a few lines on a signal pad — what matters is that it exists, is timed, and states what was authorized and why.

Afterwards comes the accounting. Where force causes deaths, a s. 196 inquiry into the cause of death follows, and the Government or DM routinely orders an RDO-level magisterial enquiry into the necessity and proportionality of the force — recording witness statements under s. 195, inspecting the scene, examining the timings, and reporting to the DM or Government. When you authorize force you are simultaneously creating the record that a later enquiry — possibly a colleague’s, possibly your own — will read line by line.

A worked example: the tank-bund road blockade

A mandal in erstwhile Nalgonda. Farmers displaced by the raising of the Komatikunta tank have been promised rehabilitation; an instalment is delayed; on a market Thursday about three hundred of them, led by a local sangam, occupy the bund road and the state highway junction below it, stopping buses. By noon the crowd is swelling, lorry drivers are arguing with picketers, and the SHO calls the RDO, who is the SDM and reaches the spot at 12:40 with the DSP.

The record the RDO builds, in real time, looks like this. 12:45 — she speaks to the sangam leaders first: the demand is noted, a meeting with the Collector is offered for Monday, and they are told plainly that the highway must open. Negotiation is not a statutory step, but it is the step that most often makes the statute unnecessary. 13:20 — the crowd refuses; some picketers begin stopping two-wheelers and tempers rise. The RDO makes the s. 148 command over the police public-address system, in Telugu, twice: the assembly is unlawful, it must disperse within fifteen minutes, force will be used if it does not. Time, words and the fact of two repetitions go into her pocket notebook. 13:40 — perhaps a third leave; a core of about a hundred sit on the road and a section begins pelting stones at the police line. 13:45 — she authorizes tear gas in writing on a signal-pad sheet: “Crowd of ~100 at Komatikunta junction refusing repeated commands to disperse, stone-pelting on. Tear smoke authorized to disperse. Lathi-charge only if line is charged. — SDM, 13:45.” 13:55 — tear gas disperses most; a group that charges the line is met with a brief lathi-charge, halted by the DSP’s whistle the moment the road clears. 14:30 — road open; eleven picketers arrested under the s. 148 arrest power and s. 170; two injured picketers and one injured constable sent to the PHC, injuries recorded. That evening — the RDO writes her spot report to the DM: timeline, warnings, authorizations, force used, injuries, arrests, and the Monday meeting commitment. No firearms were authorized; the armed forces were never in question — s. 149’s conditions were nowhere near made out.

Six weeks later a complaint alleges brutality. The enquiry gets a file with timed warnings, a written authorization, a proportionate sequence and a stop-signal. That file is the shield s. 151 promises.

Edge cases and common mistakes

• No recorded warning. The commonest fatal gap. A dispersal that begins with force and reconstructs the warning afterwards leaves every subsequent act outside the good-faith frame. Warn, time it, note it.
• The absent magistrate. Force used at a flashpoint where an EM was available but not called — or present but silent — puts the entire weight on the police officer and invites the later question of why the magistracy was bypassed. If you are the EM on bandobast duty, your place is at the sensitive point, not the guest house.
• Requisitioning the armed forces as a shortcut. s. 149 has two cumulative conditions — the assembly cannot otherwise be dispersed and public security requires it — and only the highest-ranking EM present may act. A requisition made for convenience, or by an EM junior to another present, is bad at the root.
• Force after the object is achieved. Pursuit-beating of a crowd already dispersing is the scenario in which enquiries indict officers. The statutory purpose is dispersal; when the road is clear, the power is spent.
• Prosecution without sanction. A private complaint against you or the police for spot action cannot proceed without the s. 151 sanction — flag the bar immediately, in writing, if such a complaint is entertained.
• Forgetting the aftermath duties. Deaths in police action are s. 196 territory, with the body to the civil surgeon within 24 hours under s. 196(6). The dispersal file and the death-inquiry file will be read together; build the first knowing the second may follow.

Questions you’ll actually get

“DSP: madam, the crowd is turning — give us blanket permission for the day.” No. Authorization is escalation-by-escalation, each in writing with a time, each preceded by warning. A blanket permission is precisely what an enquiry later reads as abdication.

“Can the police disperse without any magistrate at all?” Yes — s. 148 empowers the officer in charge of a police station as well, and routine dispersals happen on police authority daily. But where an EM is present or reachable at a serious flashpoint, the practice is magisterial authorization for escalation — that is what bandobast duty charts put you there for.

“Who can call the Army if it truly collapses?” Only the Executive Magistrate of the highest rank present, under s. 149, on the twin findings that civil force cannot disperse the assembly and public security requires it — and an armed-forces officer alone under s. 150 only if no EM can be contacted at all.

“A constable is being prosecuted privately for the lathi-charge — what do we do?” Point to s. 151: no prosecution for acts purporting to be done in good faith under ss. 148–150 without the State Government’s sanction (Central Government for armed-forces personnel). The bar is jurisdictional and should be raised at the threshold.

“Was my order ‘fire in the air first’ correct?” Warning shots are a police-manual question with divided doctrine — what the BNSS fixes is the frame: minimum force necessary, warning, proportionality, stop when dispersed. Record what you ordered and why the situation demanded it; the enquiry will judge necessity and proportionality on that record.

Field notes for a probationer

Before your first bandobast posting, ask the RDO to walk you through the file of the division’s last use-of-force incident: the duty chart, the magistrate’s spot report, the timings of each warning and escalation. Then write out, for yourself, the exact words you would use for a s. 148 command in Telugu and what you would record before authorizing the next step. You do not want to compose either for the first time in front of a crowd.