Cops faked an alibi for a murder accused. Can they claim 'official duty'?

A man is shot dead at 8:30 AM. One hour later, the prime accused is 'arrested' 160 km away — under the Excise Act. The alibi was fake. But the cops who made it say: we were on duty.

October 12, 2007. Near Suhagnagar Crossing in Firozabad, Uttar Pradesh. Suman Yadav is shot dead. An FIR (a written complaint that starts a police investigation) is lodged against several accused, including a man named Ashok Dixit. But on the very same day, a separate FIR is registered in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh — 160 kilometres away. It shows Ashok Dixit arrested under the Excise Act at 9:30 AM. The murder happened at 8:30 AM. By road, the two cities are over three hours apart. The alibi was not just false — it was impossible. And the men who made it possible were police officers.

The question that reached the Supreme Court: When police officers fabricate a false criminal case to shield a murder accused, can they claim they were acting in the discharge of official duty — and therefore demand that any prosecution against them first require government sanction?

When the impossible alibi unravelled

The Firozabad police investigated Suman Yadav's murder. They found that the Gwalior police, led by respondent Niranjan Upadhyay, had fabricated the Excise case against Ashok Dixit. The purpose was clear: to create a false alibi for the murder accused. A supplementary charge sheet was filed against Upadhyay under sections of the Indian Penal Code — Section 302 (murder), Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy — an agreement between two or more persons to commit an illegal act), Section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence or giving false information to screen the offender), and others related to rioting and unlawful assembly.

In 2015, the trial court in Firozabad convicted all 12 accused in the murder case, including Ashok Dixit. The court rejected the alibi as fabricated. But the police officers who created that alibi were not yet on trial. They approached the Allahabad High Court, arguing that the proceedings against them should be quashed because the prosecution had not obtained the sanction required under Section 197 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.

The shield of Section 197 CrPC

Section 197 CrPC is a protective provision. It says: no court can take cognizance of an offence alleged to have been committed by a judge or a public servant (including a police officer) while acting or purporting to act in the discharge of their official duty, without the prior sanction of the government. The idea is simple — public servants must be free to perform their duties without the constant threat of frivolous prosecution. If a police officer makes a good-faith error while investigating, he should not have to defend himself in court for every mistake.

But the provision has a limit. It protects only those acts connected to official duty — not every act done by a person who happens to be a public servant. In 2018, the Allahabad High Court accepted the police officers' argument and quashed the proceedings against them. The complainant, Om Prakash Yadav — brother of the deceased — appealed to the Supreme Court.

What the police officers argued

Before the Supreme Court, the respondent police officers maintained: registering an FIR and making an arrest are acts done in the discharge of official duty. They argued that even if the case was later found to be false, the act of registering it remained an official act. Therefore, they said, sanction under Section 197 CrPC was mandatory before any prosecution could proceed against them.

The appellant countered: fabricating a false criminal case to provide an alibi for a murder accused is not an official duty. It is a criminal conspiracy. No police officer, they argued, has the duty to create false evidence or shield a murderer. The act was entirely outside the scope of any legitimate police function.

Why the Supreme Court rejected the sanction requirement

Justice J.B. Pardiwala, writing for the bench, examined the long line of precedents on Section 197 CrPC — from the Federal Court's decision in Dr. Hori Ram Singh v. The Crown (1939) to the Supreme Court's own judgments in Matajog Dobey v. H.C. Bhari (1956) and P. Arulswami v. State (1967). The consistent test across these cases: the act must be one that the public servant is expressly or impliedly authorised to do, or that bears a reasonable connection to the performance of official duty.

The court applied what it called the "dereliction test": if a police officer failed to fabricate a false case, would that failure constitute dereliction of duty? The answer was obvious — no. A police officer who refuses to fabricate evidence is not failing in his duty; he is performing it correctly. Therefore, the act of fabricating a false case could never be said to be done in the discharge of official duty.

The court held: when police officers conspire with a murder accused to register a bogus FIR under a minor statute — in this case, the Madhya Pradesh Excise Act — to create an alibi, this constitutes a private criminal act of conspiracy and evidence destruction. It is not an exercise of official police powers. The protective shield of Section 197 CrPC does not apply.

What this means for police accountability

The judgment restores the criminal proceedings against the respondent police officers. They will now face trial for their alleged role in fabricating the false alibi. For practitioners, the ratio (the court's central reasoning) is clear: the sanction requirement under Section 197 CrPC is not a blanket immunity. It protects only acts that bear a reasonable nexus to official duty. An act that is manifestly criminal — such as fabricating evidence to shield a murder accused — is not protected, even if the person doing it wears a uniform.

THE PLAY: When challenging a sanction defence, apply the dereliction test: if failing to do the act would not constitute dereliction of duty, the act is not protected by Section 197 CrPC.

The alibi was built on paper. The court tore it apart. The officers who wrote it now face trial — not as public servants, but as accused men.