Supreme Court sets 24-hour limit for producing accused before magistrate

Underlining that “the Constitution does not recognize any detention dehors [outside] arrest,” the Supreme Court on Thursday (November 5) held that the 24-hour deadline to produce a person before a magistrate begins when the person is first detained and not when the investigating agency chooses to record a formal arrest. A bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S Chandurkar said that searches, seizures and questioning that follow an interception cannot be treated as a pause in a Constitutional safeguard. “There is no such thing called temporary disruption of liberty,” the bench said, as it set aside the Tripura High Court’s refusal of bail in a drug smuggling case. The court directed the magistrates to record when an accused’s liberty was first curtailed, and calculate the 24-hour deadline from that time. It said that the person is produced before them after the deadline has passed, they must order their release. Magistrates should also examine whether the detention was reasonable. Even if the accused was produced within 24 hours, they can refuse remand if they find that the person was kept in custody on unreasonable grounds. The ruling comes amidst large-scale detentions which police describe as preventive and can last up to 24 hours, which are a regular feature of policing in the capital. While the case arose under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, it demonstrates that the label an agency uses for restraint does not decide when the clock starts. Background of the case The case stems from a major anti-narcotics operation conducted by the Divisional Preventive Force (DPF), Customs Division Agartala. On September 29, 2025, at 2 pm, customs officers intercepted the appellants, who were carrying a total of 60 kg of methamphetamine tablets. Although the appellants were brought under physical control of the search team at 2 pm, the arresting officer did not sign the formal arrest memos until 11 am the following day. They were produced before the magistrate at 4.45 pm. A special judge and the High Court both refused bail. The investigating officer had said that the men were “merely intercepted…not formally detained” at 2 pm and that the hours between their interception and formal arrest went into search, seizure, and questioning. Legal framework The law governing the detention of a person during a criminal investigation is laid down in three provisions in the Constitution, the Bharatiya Nyaya Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) and the NDPS Act. Article 22 is a fundamental right under the Constitution that provides for an accused to be informed about the grounds of arrest and to get legal representation. Clause (2) specifically states that a person “arrested and detained” shall be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours, excluding the travel time taken to reach the court. No person shall remain in custody for more than 24 hours without the approval of a magistrate. Section 58 of the BNSS states that a person who has been arrested without a warrant cannot be detained for longer than “reasonable”. In practice, the terms “arrest” and “detention” are often used interchangeably. “Arrest” is a formal act of police taking a person into custody in connection with an offence, marking the beginning of criminal proceedings. Once a person is arrested, a range of constitutional and statutory safeguards immediately come into play. The BNSS does not define “detention” per se. Instead, it gives police a set of powers that allows them to stop, remove or temporarily hold people in certain situations, including when a crime has actually taken place. The NDPS Act gives officers the powers to search, seize and arrest people suspected of drug-related offences — Section 37 specifically places restrictions on cases involving certain serious drug offences. It governs the conditions of bail too and does not extend the time the police can keep an arrested person in custody. At the heart of the judgment lies the court’s interpretation of Article 22(2). It said that the phrase “arrested and detained in custody” is “conjunctive and not disjunctive”, that is, the two words are joined by “and” not “or”. The court said that because both the terms are joined together, they are synonymous. The court held that the “sacrosanct” 24-hour countdown to produce the person before a magistrate would begin the moment their liberty is curtailed. The only time period that is excluded from the 24 hour limit is the journey to the magistrate. It said: “The prescription of 24 hours time period would commence the moment a person is detained by the arresting authority suspecting him to have committed an offence, when his liberty is effectively curtailed…any attempt to draw an artificial distinction between ‘arrest’ and ‘detention’ would dilute or negate the fundamental protection guaranteed by the Constitution.” Buffer zones The bench in its 97-page judgment disapproved of the views taken by the Orissa High Court in the Aryaman Pattnayak case, the Madras High Court in the Kannan case, and the Kerala High Court in the Arun K Thomas case, saying that these decisions “do not lay down the correct law”. The High Courts had attempted to carve out investigative procedures for law enforcement before recording a formal arrest while calculating the 24-hour deadline. Rejecting the Orissa High Court’s view that detention becomes arrest only after a “short investigatory hold”, the Supreme Court called it “constitutionally unsustainable” and said it delved “into a realm of uncertainty”. It also rejected the Kerala High Court’s view that the 24-hour clock remains suspended during search and seizure, saying that “creation or contemplation of such buffer zone is unconstitutional”. The bench said that the Constitution does not recognise the concept of “temporary disruption of liberty” and that High Courts cannot invent a statutory buffer zone that freezes or suspends the fundamental rights for executive convenience. Informal custody The bench also said that even if the suspect is produced before a magistrate within 24 hours, Section 58 of the BNSS imposes a dual limit, that is, a 24-hour limit and that the detention within those 24 hours must be “reasonable”. It said that there was an 18-hour gap between the completion of the search on September 29 and the formal arrest the next morning. The investigating officer had not explained this delay. “18 hours in custody without judicial oversight is a long period with misuse and abuse of authority a clear possibility. Such a period certainly cannot be construed as a reasonable period,” the court said. The court said that “remand is never a mechanical exercise” and held that if there is an unexplained gap that exists within the 24-hour window, magistrates are allowed to decline the police remand on the ground of unreasonableness alone. On informal custody, the bench recalled Justice V R Krishna Iyer’s words in Niranjan Singh (1980) that reasons police have taken a person into informal custody but not arrested him are “terminological dubieties and unfair evasions of the straightforwardness of the law. He called such explanations as equivocatory quibblings and hide-and-seek niceties, describing those as a shady facet.” Fundamental rights override special laws The Tripura High Court had relied on the Supreme Court’s ruling in State of Punjab v. Sukhwinder Singh (2026), which held that the restrictions on bail under Section 37 of the NDPS Act had to be satisfied before bail could be granted. The Supreme Court expressed reservations about this observation, saying that fundamental rights cannot be exercised under the framework of Section 37. The bench said: “These fundamental rights cannot be tinkered with so lightly, not even under the special statutes.” It said that where there is a violation of Article 21 — which guarantees the protection of life and personal liberty — the restrictions under Section 37 “would have to give way”. It referred to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Union of India v. K A Najeeb (2021), which recognised that Constitutional rights could prevail over statutory restrictions on bail. CCTV and custodial violence The bench also linked the 24-hour limit to the need to prevent custodial violence, noting that the “worst violations of human rights take place during the course of investigation” when the police, in attempts to secure evidence or confessions, “resorts to third degree methods including torture”. It also said that the Supreme Court directions laid down in previous rulings require CCTV cameras with audio- and video-recording and night vision in police stations and in offices of agencies such as the National Investigation Agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, and the Enforcement Directorate, where interrogation and detention take place. The footage must be preserved for at least 18 months and longer if a complaint of custodial violence is made.