Punjab and Haryana High Court asks the Centre to decide on an NIA probe after cyber terrorism was added to a campus violence case

5 November 2026

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed Punjab to send the Centre its report on a scheduled offence within 72 hours, and asked the Centre to decide within a week whether the National Investigation Agency should take over the Lovely Professional University campus violence case. A Bench of Chief Justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and Justice Rohit Kapoor was hearing a public interest litigation by a student seeking a transfer of the investigation. Punjab Police told the Court in a status report that material had emerged to apply Section 66F of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which deals with cyber terrorism, and the provision was added. Section 66F is listed in the Schedule to the National Investigation Agency Act, 2008, which makes it a scheduled offence under Section 2(g) of that Act. Section 6 of the NIA Act then requires the State to forward the information to the Centre, which decides whether the agency investigates. The Court noted the State's affidavit did not show that these provisions had been considered. The next hearing was fixed for November 17.