The Other Sandeep Pathak: Bathinda Activist Jailed Over the Very Security Letter Meant to Protect Him

Sandeep Pathak FIR: A Bathinda activist named Sandeep Pathak was jailed for a month under the Official Secrets Act over a Y+ security letter meant for his own protection. The HC has now questioned the case, even as a namesake — BJP MP Sandeep Pathak — fights a separate FIR battle.

North Desk Correspondent

Chandigarh, September 3

Two men named Sandeep Pathak are currently entangled in Punjab’s legal system, in cases that have nothing to do with each other, and at least one police account of events appears to have blurred the two.

One is Dr Sandeep Pathak, the Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab who defected from the Aam Aadmi Party to the BJP in April 2026 and has since been named a BJP national secretary, with the party reportedly grooming him as a key strategist for the 2027 Punjab Assembly election — the same role he once played for AAP’s landslide 2022 win. He has his own separate legal fight underway, having approached the High Court seeking disclosure of at least two FIRs registered against him, with the state repeatedly seeking more time to respond.

The other is Sandeep Kumar, also known as Sandeep Pathak, a Hindu organisation activist and resident of Thermal Colony, Bathinda — the man at the centre of an FIR in Bathinda. 

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How it started

Sandeep Pathak FIR: Some weeks before that FIR, a local businessman, Lalit Arora (also reported as Lalit Kumar), was shot and injured near Gate No. 2 of Thermal Colony while sitting at a tea kiosk. Bathinda SSP Amneet Kondal’s office later confirmed that Sandeep Pathak — the Bathinda activist, not the MP — had claimed the attack was actually meant for him, and that Arora had been hit due to mistaken identity. Investigators suspected a link to a Canada-based gangster network. Following the incident, police confirmed Pathak had been “provided with security cover.”

That local cover was apparently followed by a more significant step: on 11 May 2026, the Additional Director General of Police (Security), Punjab, issued a confidential communication to Bathinda police directing that Y+ category CRPF security — sanctioned by the Ministry of Home Affairs’ VIP Security Unit in consultation with a central security agency — be arranged for “Sandeep Kumar, Thermal Colony, Bathinda,” complete with instructions for CCTV coverage and a PCR halt point at his residence.

Then the case against him: Sandeep Pathak Bathinda FIR

Sandeep Pathak FIR: A few days later, an FIR was registered — not against whoever leaked the confidential letter, but against Pathak himself, alongside an unidentified police official. The charges: Section 316(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (criminal breach of trust), Section 3 of the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, 1923, and Section 72 of the IT Act. A charge under BNS Section 238 (causing disappearance of evidence) was added later during investigation.

The FIR’s own narrative describes the letter as having been photocopied and shared by an unidentified police official with Pathak, who allegedly “misused” its contents. Bathinda police did not identify the leaking official at the time; he remains “Unknown1” in the FIR.

A police officer, speaking to a section of the press on condition of anonymity, offered a different account: that the letter had actually been meant for MP Sandeep Pathak, and that the Bathinda address had been included by clerical error — raising the question, in that officer’s words, of how a letter meant for someone else, containing an error, reached the Bathinda man in the first place.

That account sits awkwardly against the documented sequence: Pathak’s own claim of being a shooting target, the police confirmation of security cover granted to him specifically, and a confidential letter that names his Thermal Colony address, not the MP’s. Nothing in the FIR itself alleges any confusion with the MP — that theory appears to have entered the case only through an unnamed source.

Pathak was arrested and remained in judicial custody from 20 May 2026 for more than a month.

What the High Court found

Sandeep Pathak FIR: In July, the Punjab and Haryana High Court granted him regular bail — and in doing so, raised serious doubts about the case’s foundation. The order noted it was “not evident… how the communication directing the extension of ‘Y+’ security to the petitioner would fall within the ambit of an ‘official secret'” under the Act, observing that the letter concerned Pathak’s own security cover and that he therefore “appears to be the intended beneficiary and lawful recipient of such information.” The court found no material to show he had disclosed the letter publicly or used it in any way prejudicial to the state — noting instead that he had simply relied on a copy of it while pressing the authorities to actually implement the security cover he’d already been granted.

The court was careful to add that it was expressing no opinion on the merits of the case, which remains for trial. But it also noted the investigation was “substantially concluded,” his custodial interrogation no longer required, and that continued incarceration “would serve no useful investigational purpose.”

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