A family quarrel over the right to shut a gate has traveled all the way to the Kerala High Court, but the judges made it clear—police protection is not meant to settle civil disputes dressed up as law and order problems.
A bench led by Chief Justice Nitin Jamdar with Justice Basant Balaji struck down an earlier single-judge order that had directed the police to step in and shield a couple who wanted to lock their property gate despite objections from relatives.
The judges underscored that Article 226 of the Constitution cannot be used casually. Unless there is a genuine threat to peace and order, the police cannot be deployed as private guards in family property spats.
“The police work with finite resources and are meant to respond to emergencies, not to act as referees in domestic disputes. Routine orders of protection without actual law and order concerns risk pulling the force away from real crises,” the Court observed.
The dispute dates back years. Pradeep and his wife Chitra had claimed they were being harassed by relatives who insisted the gate remain open. In 2023, they secured a High Court order for police protection. But their kin—Aravindakshan, his son Sudheer, and Sunil—challenged that ruling, pointing out that a munsiff court had already dismissed the couple’s claims in 2018, including demands for easement rights and an injunction against locking the gate.
The Division Bench drew a clear line between civil remedies available under the Civil Procedure Code and constitutional writ powers. Before issuing a writ of mandamus to the police, the Court said, there must be a provable threat to public order.
In this case, that threshold was never met. The single judge, the Bench noted, should have directed the parties toward civil remedies instead of invoking writ jurisdiction.
The earlier order was set aside, with instructions for the single judge to re-examine the matter afresh—this time weighing whether mandamus truly applies, whether other remedies exist, and whether the property’s previous state of affairs needs to be restored.
