Supreme Court pulls up police for arresting accused without following norms

New Delhi, March 19

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The Supreme Court has frowned upon the practice of police officers arresting accused persons without following the procedure prescribed under the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).

“We deprecate such practice of the police officer in overstepping after the matter being instituted in this court and taking the petitioners into custody without compliance of Section 41(A) CrPC and keeping in view the judgment of this court in Arnesh Kumar vs State of Bihar & Anr. (2014),” a Bench led by Justice Ajay Rastogi said.

Overstepping jurisdiction

We deprecate such practice of the police officer in overstepping after the matter being instituted in this court and taking the petitioners into custody without compliance of Section 41(A) CrPC. — SC Bench

Dealing with a special leave petition challenging a Bombay High Court order dismissing the anticipatory bail plea of accused Jagdish Shrivastav, the Bench took exception to the fact that the police officer concerned didn’t even wait for the outcome of his bail plea pending before the top court.

In Arnesh Kumar’s case, the top court said the police must issue a notice of appearance under Section 41(A) of CrPC within two weeks from the date of institution of the case and the reasons for not arresting should also be recorded in writing.

This was aimed at ensuring that a police officer did not arrest any accused unnecessarily. It had also issued certain directions to magistrates to ensure that they did not authorise detention casually and mechanically.

Petitioner’s counsel pointed out that the investigating officer of the case did not serve any notice on the accused under Section 41(A) of CrPC and he tried to make the anticipatory bail plea meaningless by arresting him on March 8 before the top court decided the matter.

As the petitioner had already been arrested, the top court gave him liberty to seek regular bail. “If such an application is filed, it is expected from the Trial Court to take note of non-compliance of Section 41(A) CrPC and dispose of the application for post-arrest bail, if any, filed by the petitioners within a reasonable time as expeditiously as possible,” the Bench said in its March 11 order.