Examine the use-of-force doctrine for crowd control by Indian police forces and the accountability mechanisms available against alleged excesses.

Crowd control tests the constitutional balance between the Article 19(1)(b) freedom of assembly and the State's duty to preserve public order. Indian law permits force, but only the minimum necessary — a doctrine whose weakness lies less in the norms than in their enforcement.

The use-of-force doctrine

• Statutory basis: the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (Sections 148–151) allows an Executive Magistrate or police officer to disperse an unlawful assembly, escalating from civil force to armed force only where necessary, and requires that force cease once dispersal is achieved [1].
• Graded response: persuasion and repeated warnings, then water cannon and tear smoke, and only thereafter a controlled lathi-charge — the proportionality and last-resort principle stressed by the NHRC's human-rights standards for police [2].
• Institutional guidance: the 2nd ARC's Fifth Report, "Public Order", urged non-lethal crowd-control equipment, specialised training and clear command responsibility [3].
• Identifiability: personnel on crowd duty must wear name tags, and operations should be videographed, so individual excess remains traceable.

Accountability mechanisms

• Institutional: Police Complaints Authorities at State and district level, mandated by Prakash Singh v. Union of India (2006) alongside the State Security Commission and Police Establishment Board [4].
• Human-rights oversight: NHRC guidelines requiring magisterial inquiry, post-mortem videography and mandatory reporting in custodial and encounter deaths [2].
• Judicial: writ jurisdiction and court-appointed probe panels — as with the Supreme Court committee examining alleged excesses during the July 20, 2026 Jantar Mantar protest [5].
• Parliamentary: the Standing Committee on Home Affairs can summon the Home Ministry [6]; yet on August 25, 2026 the chair declined to take up the crackdown as sub judice, showing how convention can narrow legislative scrutiny [5].

The doctrine is sound; the deficit is institutional — many Complaints Authorities remain weakly constituted and advisory. Full implementation of the Prakash Singh directives, statutory crowd-control SOPs with mandatory body-worn recording, and timely committee scrutiny once cases conclude would make restraint enforceable, aligning policing with SDG 16 on accountable institutions.