Harmeet Kaur alias Bibi v. State of Rajasthan — S.B. Criminal Misc. (Petition) No. 10651/2025 | 2026:RJ-JP:35881 | Farjand Ali J | arguments concluded and order reserved 22.07.2026, pronounced 12.08.2026 | marked REPORTABLE on the face of the order
The judgment opens, unusually, with a passage from Gandhi’s Harijan of March 1933 on worship in temples, mosques and churches, and on making no distinction between those abodes of God — a framing the Court returns to when it separates religious faith from proprietary right.
Subject matter. Preventive jurisdiction under Sections 164 and 165 of the BNSS — whether a Magistrate may attach a place of worship and appoint a receiver, and how “possession” is to be understood when the property is religious rather than private.
Facts. The petitioner had served as Mukhya Sewadar of Gurudwara Mehtabgarh Sahib, Goluwala, District Hanumangarh, since 2016, handling its management and day-to-day affairs. A dispute over management arose between her and another group, largely from the same community. On 3 October 2025 at about 3:15 a.m., a crowd of some 50 to 60 persons armed with lathis, swords, gandasis and spears is alleged to have approached the rear gate and attempted to scale the boundary wall despite police restraint, with several people injured and seventeen persons named. Two cross-FIRs followed from the same incident — No. 243/2025 on the report of ASI Vijay Singh, who was present on patrol, and No. 244/2025 on the petitioner’s own report. On the SHO’s complaint alleging apprehension of breach of peace, the SDM Pilibanga ordered attachment of the premises and appointed the SHO as receiver on 3 October 2025. The Additional Sessions Judge No. 2, Hanumangarh dismissed the revision on 18 November 2025. The petitioner moved this Court under Section 528 BNSS, arguing that her possession was admitted in the SHO’s own complaint, that a management dispute concerns neither land, water nor boundaries, and that no emergency survived once the alleged miscreants had been arrested.
Questions of law. Whether preventive jurisdiction can be invoked where the dispute concerns management of a religious institution rather than land; whether appointment by the SGPC confers possessory or proprietary right; and whether a Magistrate may effectively displace a person already in occupation through Section 165.
Findings. The Court made an unusual factual enquiry before reaching the law. Curious whether any statutory provision, rule, tradition or convention required Gurudwaras to be centrally administered by the SGPC, and finding that neither counsel nor the Additional Advocate General could point to one, it invited members of the Sikh community practising at the Bar — including counsel appearing in the matter — to assist. Their response was unanimous: Gurudwaras are ordinarily established by local devotees from their own resources and managed by locally constituted committees, with no universal rule of central SGPC control. On that footing the petitioner’s claim through SGPC appointment could not, without a legally established source of title, confer ownership or exclusive possession.
The doctrinal core is the distinction between the institution and the property. Management and ownership are separate juridical concepts, and long association, religious devotion or decades of seva cannot ripen into dominion over land. The Court drew a further distinction between private property and a place of worship: entry onto private property depends on express, implied or deemed permission of the owner, whereas a religious place, subject to lawful and uniformly applicable restrictions such as regulated timings, is intended to remain accessible irrespective of a person’s religion, faith or denomination, so questions of possession there cannot be examined by mechanically applying private-property principles. To illustrate, the Court observed that its own building derives significance not from bricks and stone but from the judicial institution functioning within it; likewise a Gurudwara’s character flows from the Guru Granth Sahib installed on the Palki Sahib and the worship carried on, not from the parcel of land.
On the preventive question the Court accepted that Sections 164 and 165 are not proceedings for declaration of title, and reaffirmed, following its own decision in Ashoknath Chela Kevalnath, that a Magistrate must record satisfaction of emergency and imminent danger on cogent material rather than bald assertion. But it held that where the basis of exclusive possession has no lawful foundation, physical occupation alone cannot claim protection, and that a preventive authority faced with rival groups repeatedly confronting each other, weapons being carried, police being obstructed and forcible entry into religious premises attempted, is not expected to remain a silent spectator. The object of preventive jurisdiction is preservation of peace, not declaration of a winner, and the law must operate before the occurrence rather than after the damage.
The petition was dismissed and both orders affirmed, with two safeguards. First, the dismissal expressly does not adjudicate title, ownership or permanent management rights, and the parties remain free to approach the competent forum. Second, noting that the original SHO appointed as receiver had been subjected to aspersions and had since been transferred, and recording the Superintendent of Police’s assurance that the present incumbent is neutral, the Court directed a fresh assessment of the ground situation by the SHO, a fresh report to be obtained and considered by the Superintendent, and the matter to be placed before the competent superior authority for an appropriate decision on an objective assessment.
Significance. Three things make this worth reporting. The first is the proposition that gives the judgment its heading — devotion and long-standing management of a place of worship do not convert into possessory title, however genuine the faith. Given how many disputes over temples, mosques, dargahs and Gurudwaras are fought on precisely that conflation, the distinction between institution and property is likely to be cited well beyond Rajasthan. The second is the treatment of possession at a religious place as conceptually different from possession of private property, because general accessibility is built into the character of the premises. The third is methodological: faced with an assertion about religious administrative practice that no statute or precedent addressed, the Court sought assistance from practitioners of that faith at its own Bar and recorded their unanimous response as the basis for its finding — a transparent way of establishing a customary practice that neither party had proved.