New Delhi: The Supreme Court has delivered a ruling on when the time limit for producing a person arrested by the police before a court begins.
The Tripura High Court had refused to grant bail to 4 people arrested under the Narcotic Drugs Act in the state. Challenging this, they filed an appeal in the Supreme Court. In it, it was alleged that all 4 had been illegally detained in police custody for 18 hours before their arrest. This petition came up for hearing before a bench comprising Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S. Chandurkar.
The judges, after hearing arguments from both sides, stated in their ruling: When a person is brought under the control of the police, the time limit for producing that person before a judge begins from that very moment, and it must be done within 24 hours. In other words, even if the police record that a person was detained at 10 a.m. and arrested at 6 p.m., the 24-hour period must be counted from 10 a.m.
Furthermore, when the arrested person is produced before the court, the judge must обязательно record the exact time at which he was actually detained. It is mandatory to produce the detained person before the judge within 24 hours. Delayed production cannot be accepted by merely showing the proper arrest register. Likewise, a person must not be unnecessarily kept detained for a long time on the pretext that there is a 24-hour period available. This is what it states.
