The Supreme Court ruled that police must calculate the 24-hour deadline to produce an accused before a Magistrate from actual detention.
A Bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S. Chandurkar delivered the judgment while hearing appeals filed by four individuals in an NDPS case.
The appellants had challenged a Tripura High Court decision that denied them bail.
Article 22(2) of the Constitution mandates the production of any detained individual before the nearest Magistrate within 24 hours of arrest.
The court rejected the distinction between informal detention and formal arrest for computing this constitutional timeline.
The Bench stated that counting 24 hours only from formal arrest is legally unsustainable and unconstitutional.
The apex court ordered the immediate release of any person held beyond 24 hours without a Magistrate’s authorization.
Courts can only exclude the journey time from the place of arrest to the Magistrate while calculating this period.
The Bench emphasized that compliance with the deadline does not automatically justify police custody.
Investigating agencies must also ensure that the custody duration remains reasonable under Section 58 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita.
Section 58 prohibits police officers from detaining a person without a warrant for longer than reasonable circumstances allow.
Magistrates must now record the exact date and time police first curtailed an accused person’s liberty.
Magistrates are duty-bound to independently verify whether police complied with the 24-hour constitutional deadline.
Magistrates can decline further remand if they find the pre-production custody duration unreasonable.
Setting aside the High Court order, the Supreme Court granted bail to all four appellants subject to trial court conditions.
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