PRAYAGRAJ, Jan. 25 -- Observing that failure to disclose specific grounds of arrest in the arrest memo will amount to dereliction of duty, the Allahabad high court has directed that errant cops must be suspended. Allowing a habeas corpus writ petition, the court directed that the petitioner be set free and further directed that any police officer in the state who fails to disclose specific grounds of arrest in the arrest memo shall be liable for departmental proceedings also. Allowing a habeas corpus writ petition filed by one Umang Rastogi and another, a division bench of Justice Siddharth and Justice Jai Krishna Upadhyay observed, "Empty compliance of the law by merely filling out forms without substance amounts to a dereliction of duty." "It is high time that the police officials, who are not complying the requirements of the arrest memo and violating the constitutional mandate provided under Article 22(1) of the constitution of India and further violating section 50 and 50A criminal procedure code (CrPC), which is now section 47, 48 and Bhartiya Nyaya Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) should be sternly dealt with," the court observed. The court directed that the order be communicated to the Uttar Pradesh's director general of police. The court was hearing a petition filed by one Umang Rastogi and another, who moved the high court challenging the arrest and subsequent remand order passed by a civil judge in Gautam Buddh Nagar. It was alleged in the petition that arrest of Umang Rastogi was illegal as the mandatory grounds of arrest were not furnished to the accused in writing, which is a violation of the Supreme Court's mandate in Mihir Rajesh vs. State of Maharashtra. Rastogi was arrested without providing him any ground of arrest on December 26, 2025, from Haldwani, Uttarakhand. He was taken before the remand magistrate in Gautam Buddh Nagar the next day, but no copy of the arresting memo was provided to him. When his counsel moved an application for his release on the aforesaid ground the same day, the concerned magistrate rejected the petition. The high court found that while the investigating officer had used the correct proforma for preparing the arrest memo, the column related to the grounds of arrest was not properly filled. In this case, the sub-inspector merely noted that the accused was informed of the offence and the sections invoked and that his father had been informed telephonically. The high court took strong exception to this lapse. The court noted that the clause does not merely require informing the accused of the sections but mandates the disclosure of "all the material from which his involvement in the crime is clear". Relying on the Supreme Court's Mihir Rajesh Shah judgment, which held that grounds of arrest must be furnished to the arrestee in writing, the high court in its decision dated January 22, 2026, declared the arrest and the subsequent remand order dated December 27, 2025, as illegal, null and void....