The judiciary's supervisory role is often the last resort against police excesses in India. Discuss with reference to recent Supreme Court interventions.

Policing is a State subject, and the primary checks on police excess — departmental inquiry, executive oversight, statutory complaints bodies — are internal to the very machinery accused. When these fail, Article 32 makes the Supreme Court the residual, though not ideal, forum for accountability.

Why the judiciary becomes the last resort

• Structural conflict of interest: departmental probes into firing incidents are conducted by the same hierarchy, weakening credibility [1].
• Weak statutory accountability: Police Complaints Authorities, mandated by Prakash Singh (2006) and the Model Police Act, 2006, remain under-resourced and unevenly constituted across States [2].
• Open-ended force provisions: Section 148, BNSS 2023 permits dispersal of an unlawful assembly "by force" without a codified graded-response protocol, leaving proportionality to field discretion [3].
• Advisory recommendations: the 2nd ARC's 5th Report, Public Order (2007) urged minimum-force doctrine and independent oversight, but such reports bind no one [4].

Recent Supreme Court interventions

• Hearing petitions on police handling of the NEET-UG 2026 paper-leak protests, the Court is examining allegations of excessive force against student protesters and has directed preservation of evidence and restraint against coercive action [5].
• Judicial scrutiny compelled Bihar Police to file an affidavit admitting a constable fired four AK-47 rounds — a weapon the force itself classifies as a platoon-level special-operations weapon, not for law-and-order duty — and a ballistic examination was ordered [5]. The State's corrective DGP instructions of 1 August 2026 on AK-47 use followed the controversy [5].
• Prakash Singh itself remains the template: seven binding directives on tenure, oversight and separation of investigation from law and order [1].

Limits of the judicial route

• Intervention is post-facto and case-specific; compliance with 2006 directives has been diluted by several State enactments [1].
• Courts cannot supervise everyday field conduct.

Judicial supervision is thus indispensable but insufficient. Codified graded-force SOPs, weapon standardisation for crowd control, body-camera documentation and functional Police Complaints Authorities would make accountability routine rather than exceptional — restoring the constitutional balance between public order and Article 19 freedoms that the Court now sustains alone.