Delhi/Alive News: The Supreme Court has clarified that the 24-hour period for producing an arrested person before a magistrate begins from the moment their freedom is restricted by police or an investigating agency, not from the time their formal arrest is recorded.
A bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S. Chandurkar said investigating agencies cannot treat the period between taking a person into custody and formally recording their arrest as separate. Any attempt to use this gap to bypass the constitutional 24-hour limit is illegal.
The court clarified that only the time reasonably required to travel to the magistrate’s court can be excluded from the 24-hour period.
What was the case about?
The ruling came in the case of Sujit Das vs Union of India, which involved accused persons in a drug trafficking case. They were taken into custody at 2 pm on September 29, 2025, but their formal arrest was recorded only the following day, September 30.
The investigating agency argued that the 24-hour period should begin from the time the formal arrest was recorded. The accused challenged this, arguing that the delay violated Article 22(2) of the Constitution, which requires an arrested person to be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours.
The Supreme Court accepted the accused persons’ argument. It held that they should have been produced before a magistrate by 2 pm on September 30. However, they were produced at 4.45 pm, exceeding the deadline by 2 hours and 45 minutes.
The court held that the delay violated the constitutional requirement and ordered the immediate release of the accused. It also set aside the Tripura High Court’s order denying them bail.
The court noted that there was a gap of around 18 hours between the accused being taken into custody and their formal arrest being recorded. The investigating agency failed to provide a reasonable explanation for this delay.
