Cracking down on the mechanical implication of young accused in a state long dogged by allegations of police excesses, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has made it clear to the Punjab Police that FIRs should not be registered against youths solely on the basis of secret information or disclosure statements of co-accused, particularly in cases involving the alleged recovery of weapons. The bench also made it clear that proper verification and adherence to due procedure was required to precede FIR registration against them.The assertions came after Justice Sanjay Vashisth took note of an affidavit filed by Vikas Sabharwal, Assistant IGP, Investigation (Litigation), Bureau of Investigation, Punjab, along with a circular dated April 3.Referring the circular, Justice Vashisth observed that the instructions expressly “emphasised that an individual of tender age shall not be nominated as an accused solely on the basis of a disclosure statement of a co-accused, without any independent corroboration”.Justice Vashisth went a step further by placing an obligation on the state machinery to internalise and implement these safeguards in investigation practices. “This court expects that the state authorities will ensure that investigating officers are sensitized to the principle that FIRs should not be directly registered against young boys aged 18-20 years solely on the basis of secret information, especially in cases where the offence is alleged to have been committed only after the recovery of dangerous weapons. Proper verification and adherence to procedure must precede registration of such FIRs.”The state counsel, during the course of hearing, submitted that due care would be exercised in such cases in the future by the investigating officer concerned and “there will be thorough compliance with the observations made by this court”.Before parting with the order, the bench directed the forwarding of the order the state DGP. The order is significant as it seeks to curb the practice of implicating young individuals at the threshold stage of criminal proceedings without substantive material, particularly in arms-related cases where recoveries are often shown as the basis for invoking penal provisions.It comes nearly three months after the DGP was asked to examine how serious criminal cases were being registered in the state solely on the basis of unverified “secret information”, without checks, verification or even a raid — particularly against boys aged 18 to 20.Justice Vashisth also drew a sharp parallel with colonial-era policing practices. The court warned that such practices, once used by the British to arbitrarily implicate citizens, were wholly impermissible in a constitutional democracy governed by the rule of law. “This court is constrained to remind itself of the British era, when the police, acting as an instrument of colonial rule, often implicated persons arbitrarily on the basis of mere allegations or alleged receipt of information, without any meaningful verification. In the present time, such practices would be antithetical to personal liberty, being it wholly impermissible in a sovereign and democratic republic governed by the Constitution and the rule of law,” the court had then observed.