Introduction
The right to protest is constitutionally protected and politically foundational. A democracy without effective channels for popular dissent is a democracy only in form, and the Supreme Court of India has repeatedly affirmed that the freedom to assemble and to express collective grievance falls within the core of the fundamental rights guaranteed by Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(b) of the Constitution. Yet the exercise of this right is not legally frictionless. When large numbers of people gather in response to an organiser’s call, and when those gathering produces injury, property damage, obstruction of emergency services, or harm to bystanders, the law must determine who, if anyone, bears responsibility for those consequences. The organiser’s liability of civil, criminal, and administrative is a question that sits at an uneasy intersection of constitutional guarantee, criminal law, and the law of tort, and it is a question that Indian law has not resolved with the precision that the frequency and scale of public protest in this country now demands.
The conceptual difficulty begins with the nature of the organiser’s relationship to the crowd. An organiser who calls a demonstration provides the social coordination that causes people to appear at a particular place and time, but they do not control, in any meaningful physical sense, what thousands of individuals collectively do once they are there. They are neither employer nor principal; the participants are neither employees nor agents. The organiser’s authority is moral and reputational, exercised through the announcement of a purpose and the expectation of disciplined collective conduct in pursuit of it. When crowd behaviour departs from that announced purpose, when peaceful demonstration becomes rioting, when legitimate obstruction of traffic becomes blockade of an ambulance, when protest becomes disorder, the law’s question is whether the departure is the organiser’s legal responsibility, and in what measure. The answer requires separate analysis of the criminal law, the law of tort, and the administrative framework of protest permission and police powers, because each of these legal regimes approaches the question with different premises and produces different consequences.
The Constitutional Framework and the Permissible Limits of Assembly
Article 19(1)(b) of the Constitution of India guarantees all citizens the right to assemble peaceably and without arms. Article 19(3) permits the State to impose reasonable restrictions on this right in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India or public order. The phrase “peaceably and without arms” is itself a qualification built into the guarantee: the constitutional right attaches to peaceful assembly, and an assembly that has become violent or armed has, at least arguably, moved outside the right’s protection. The Supreme Court addressed the nature of this right in Ramlila Maidan Incident v. Home Secretary, Union of India (2012), where it held that the right to peaceful protest including the right to sit and sleep at a public venue in furtherance of a satyagraha is a fundamental right under Articles 19(1)(a) and (b), and that the State cannot disperse a peaceful assembly merely on grounds of administrative inconvenience. The Court was equally explicit, however, that the right is not absolute: the State may regulate the time, place, and manner of assemblies in furtherance of legitimate public order objectives, provided the restriction is proportionate to the purpose.
The more recent decision in Amit Sahni v. Commissioner of Police (2020), the Shaheen Bagh case introduced a qualification of considerable practical importance for the analysis of organiser liability. The Court held that while the right to protest is fundamental, the site and method of protest are subject to reasonable regulation and cannot indefinitely block public rights of way. It specifically noted that the designated protest space must be one that does not unduly interfere with the rights of other citizens to move freely, to use public roads, and to access emergency services. The implication for organisers is significant: they may not invoke the constitutional right to protest as a shield against the full range of legal consequences that flow from the manner in which the protest is organised and conducted. The constitutional right protects the act of collective expression; it does not immunise the organiser from civil or criminal liability for foreseeable harm arising from inadequate crowd management or the choice of protest site and method.
This constitutional framework establishes the baseline within which the more specific rules of criminal and tortious liability must be read. The organiser is not an outlaw by virtue of organising a protest, nor is the state entitled to proceed against them merely because a protest causes inconvenience. But the organiser who takes on the social function of bringing large numbers of people together in a public space has assumed a role that the law recognises as carrying responsibilities, and those responsibilities exist alongside and do not extinguish the constitutional protection of the underlying activity.
Criminal Liability: Unlawful Assembly, Common Object, and Constructive Guilt
The criminal law framework applicable to protest organisers whose gatherings turn violent draws principally on the provisions of the (BNS), which replaced the Indian Penal Code with effect from 1 July 2024. Section 189 BNS defines an unlawful assembly as an assembly of five or more persons whose common object is to commit an offence, to resist the execution of lawful process, to commit criminal trespass, to use force or show criminal force to any public servant in the execution of their duty, or to compel another person to do what they are not legally bound to do. The definition of “common object” under Section 189 BNS is the central concept for organiser liability: if a protest that is called for a lawful purpose of demonstration against a policy, demand for legislative action, commemoration of a grievance develops into one whose common object, in the light of events on the ground, has become the commission of violence or criminal force, every member of the assembly who continues to participate with knowledge of the common object is potentially guilty under Section 191 BNS (rioting) by virtue of the constructive liability provision in Section 190 BNS.
Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 — Section 190 (Liability of Member of Unlawful Assembly for Offences Committed in Prosecution of Common Object):
If an offence is committed by any member of an unlawful assembly in prosecution of the common object of that assembly, or such as the members of that assembly knew to be likely to be committed in prosecution of that object, every person who, at the time of the committing of that offence, is a member of the same assembly, is guilty of that offence.
Section 190 BNS is the provision that creates the most acute criminal exposure for organisers. Its application does not require that the organiser personally committed any act of violence. It requires only that: (a) an offence was committed by a member of an unlawful assembly; (b) it was committed in prosecution of the assembly’s common object or was of a type that the members knew was likely to be committed; and (c) the accused was a member of that assembly at the relevant time. An organiser who is present at the scene and has not disassociated themselves from the assembly at the point it becomes unlawful is potentially within the reach of Section 190. The Supreme Court in Masalti v. State of Uttar Pradesh 1965, affirmed that the constructive liability under the equivalent IPC provision is strict within its terms: neither prior knowledge of the specific offence committed, nor personal participation in its commission, is required. Knowledge that the common object of the assembly was of the kind from which such an offence might be likely to result is sufficient.
Criminal liability can also arise for organisers under Section 48 BNS (common intention), where the prosecution can establish that the organiser shared with others a pre-formed intention to commit the act that resulted in the offence, and under the abetment provisions of Section 45 BNS where the organiser is shown to have instigated, facilitated, or conspired in the commission of an offence. In Kehar Singh v. State (Delhi Administration) (1988), the Supreme Court held that abetment by conspiracy does not require direct participation in the criminal act, only deliberate assistance in its commission through prior agreement. An organiser who continues to address a crowd that has already turned violent, or who, through social media communications or other means, encourages participants to “stand firm” when police are attempting to disperse an unlawful assembly, may be exposing themselves to liability under these provisions.
The administrative criminal framework supplements the substantive criminal law. Section 163 of the (BNSS), successor to Section 144 CrPC, empowers a Magistrate to issue orders directed at individuals or the public generally in situations of imminent threat to public safety, public order, or public tranquillity. An organiser who proceeds with a demonstration in defiance of a Section 163 order issued on legitimate grounds commits an offence under Section 223 BNS and may also attract criminal contempt if the order was issued by a court. The Section 163 BNSS power was examined in detail in Ramlila Maidan and found to require genuine satisfaction of the Magistrate as to the existence of an emergency: it cannot be used as a routine instrument to suppress lawful protest. But an organiser who defies a valid order, and whose defiance contributes to the disorder that the order was intended to prevent, has compounded both their criminal and their civil exposure.
Civil Liability: The Duty of Care, Negligence, and Damages
The civil liability of protest organisers in India is governed, in the absence of specific statutory provision, by the general law of tort as it has been developed by Indian courts drawing on common law principles. The foundational question is whether an organiser owes a duty of care to those who attend the event, to members of the public who may be affected by it, and to emergency services personnel who may be required to respond to it. Indian courts have not yet produced a decision that addresses this question directly in the protest context, making the analysis necessarily one of principle from first sources.
The framework for establishing a duty of care in Indian tort law derives from the proximity principle articulated in Donoghue v. Stevenson (1932) and subsequently developed through the neighbour test, the question of who is sufficiently proximate to the defendant’s conduct that the defendant ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as potentially affected by that conduct. An organiser who issues a public call for large numbers of people to attend a specific location at a specific time has created the conditions of proximity: the attendees come because of the organiser’s invitation, and the organiser can foresee, as the Supreme Court in Vidya Devi v. State of Himachal Pradesh (1972), recognised in a different context, that a reasonably foreseeable consequence of bringing large crowds together in a public space is the risk of crowd-related harm if adequate crowd management measures are not taken.
The elements of negligence require the claimant to establish: (a) a duty of care owed by the organiser; (b) breach of that duty by the organiser’s failure to meet the standard of a reasonable person in their position; (c) causation between the breach and the harm; and (d) damage of a recognised kind. For protest organisers, the breach analysis is the most practically complex. What does a reasonably careful organiser do? The answer will vary with the anticipated scale of attendance, the nature of the location, the history of prior protests on the same issue, and whether prior notice of potential disorder was available to the organiser. An organiser of a demonstration expected to attract several thousand participants in a central urban location owes a qualitatively different duty than one who calls a neighbourhood meeting of a few dozen people. The former ought reasonably to consider: the provision of stewarding, the identification of safe access and egress routes, coordination with the local police authority, communication channels for de-escalating tension if disorder threatens, and the establishment of a command structure capable of making decisions about dispersal in real time.
The Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984 creates a statutory basis for civil liability for damage to public property arising from mob action, including action at protests. Section 3 of that Act makes the person who has instigated, organised, or otherwise caused the mob action jointly and severally liable for the damage caused. The Act further creates a presumption, rebuttable by the accused, that the damage was caused because of the mob action in which the accused participated or which they organised. This statutory civil liability operates alongside and does not displace the general law of negligence.
Administrative Obligations, Comparative Perspectives, and Reform
In many Indian states and Union Territories, the holding of a public demonstration requires prior intimation or permission from the police authority under police acts and local laws. In Delhi, for instance, Rule 7 of the Delhi Police Act, 1978 requires advance notice of a proposed procession or assembly to the relevant police authority. The requirement of prior notice is not constitutionally impermissible — the Supreme Court in Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan v. Union of India(2018), upheld the state’s power to designate specific areas for protest and to require prior permission for demonstrations in other areas, provided the system is not used to suppress lawful expression on grounds of content. Where an organiser applies for and obtains a police permission for a protest, the conditions attached to that permission route specifications, time limits, permitted attendance, marshalling requirements become legally significant: compliance mitigates the organiser’s exposure; departure from conditions, particularly where that departure contributes to disorder, may aggravate both criminal and civil liability.
The comparative experience of the United Kingdom, where protest organisation has been the subject of considerably more judicial and legislative attention, offers frameworks that are instructive for the Indian context. The Public Order Act 1986 (UK) imposes an obligation on organisers of processions to give six days’ written notice to the police, specifying the proposed route, time, and duration. Failure to notify is a criminal offence. The Act also empowers the police to impose conditions on the conduct of an assembly if a senior officer reasonably believes that the assembly may result in serious public disorder, serious damage to property, or serious disruption to the life of the community. The House of Lords in R v. Jones (2006), recognised that the common law right to protest is a valuable constitutional right that may not be curtailed by overbroad criminal or civil consequences, while affirming that reasonable regulatory conditions imposed in advance of a protest are compatible with that right. The UK framework distinguishes carefully between the exercise of the right and the manner of its exercise: the former is protected; the latter is regulable.
From this analysis of constitutional, criminal, tortious, and administrative liability, a framework of organiser duties emerges with reasonable clarity. A protest organiser owes, in proportion to the anticipated scale and risk profile of the event, duties that include: giving advance notice to the relevant authorities; conducting a reasonable assessment of crowd management requirements; providing adequate stewarding for the anticipated attendance; establishing communications channels for de-escalation; designating routes and spaces that do not unnecessarily obstruct emergency services; and making arrangements for orderly dispersal. These duties are not absolute, they do not guarantee against all disorder but they define a standard of reasonable care whose satisfaction provides a significant, though not complete, mitigation of civil liability, and whose observance makes criminal constructive liability considerably harder for the prosecution to establish.
Three legislative reforms would provide the clarity that Indian law currently lacks. First, a dedicated statute or set of rules governing public assemblies should be enacted at the central level, specifying the obligations of organisers prior notice requirements, steward ratios, crowd management obligations with graduated specifications based on the anticipated size of the gathering. Second, the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984 should be amended to define more precisely the circumstances in which an organiser, as distinct from a participant, is liable for damage caused by crowd action, and to specify defences available to an organiser who has complied with their reasonable crowd management duties. Third, the BNS should clarify the conditions under which an organiser who has taken genuine and documented steps to maintain the lawful character of an assembly may avail of a defence to the constructive liability provisions of Section 190, placing the evidentiary burden on the prosecution to establish either actual knowledge of the likely offence or wilful blindness to an obvious risk.
Conclusion
The legal position of a protest organiser in India is one of genuine and unresolved complexity. The constitutional right to organise collective expression is among the most valued guarantees in the Indian constitutional order. The criminal and civil consequences of organising a gathering that produces harm are significant, potentially severe, and inadequately defined by the present state of the law. The organiser who calls thousands of people onto the streets has assumed a role of social and legal consequence whose obligations are currently determined by a patchwork of criminal code provisions, unarticulated tort principles, inconsistently applied police powers, and Supreme Court decisions that address the right to protest without systematically addressing the duties that accompany its exercise.
A legal system that protects the right to assemble without specifying what organisers must do to exercise that right responsibly does a disservice to both the right and the public. It leaves organisers without clear guidance, exposes them to potentially disproportionate criminal liability through the operation of constructive guilt, and leaves those harmed by crowd disorder without a clear civil cause of action or a defined standard against which the organiser’s conduct can be measured. The constitutional right to protest is not diminished by requiring those who organise it to meet a defined standard of public safety. It is, on the contrary, better protected by a framework that makes the conditions of its lawful exercise predictable and the consequences of its unlawful conduct proportionate.
References
- Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Act 45 of 2023)
- Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (Act 46 of 2023)
- Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984 (Act 3 of 1984)
- Public Order Act 1986 (UK)
- Ramlila Maidan Incident v Home Secretary, Union of India (2012) 5 SCC 1
- Amit Sahni v Commissioner of Police (2020) 10 SCC 439
- Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan v Union of India (2018) 17 SCC 324
- Masalti v State of Uttar Pradesh AIR 1965 SC 202
- Kehar Singh v State (Delhi Administration) (1988) 3 SCC 609
- Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562
- R v Jones [2006] UKHL 16
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- Rts. Comm., General Comment No. 37: Article 21 (Right of Peaceful Assembly), U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/GC/37 (July 23, 2020), https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/general-comments-and-recommendations/general-comment-no-37-2020-right-peaceful
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Author: S Karthikeyan
Passionate Law Student