24-hour deadline to produce accused in court starts from moment of detention: SC

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the 24-hour deadline for producing a detained person before a magistrate begins from the time of detention, not from the time of formal arrest, holding that authorities cannot use the distinction between the two to delay judicial scrutiny.

A bench, comprising Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice Atul S Chandurkar, said that counting the 24-hour period only from the formal arrest would violate the constitutional mandate under Article 22(2) and Section 56 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS).

"There cannot be any temporary suspension of a fundamental right," the Supreme Court observed.

The bench directed magistrates to record the date and time of detention and verify whether the 24-hour constitutional limit for producing the person before them has been followed.

"Article 22(2) does not sanction exclusion of the time taken for inquiry or investigation before the arresting authority could effect arrest of the detainee. This is beyond the mandate of clause (2) of Article 22. The only exception the Constitution itself provides is the time necessary for the journey from the place of arrest to the court of the magistrate," the Court pronounced, according to a Live Law report.

The court made it clear that the time spent in custody before formal arrest cannot be excluded from the 24-hour calculation, ruling that any such interpretation would undermine the protection against detention without timely judicial oversight.

"Therefore, the dichotomy that the period of 24 hours for the purposes of clause (2) of Article 22 commences from the completion of such search and seizure and only from the time of arrest recorded by the arresting authority is not only unsustainable in law but is entirely unconstitutional," the bench added.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.- Ends