Giving grounds of arrest to accused must, says HC

New Delhi: Delhi High Court on Monday stressed that the grounds of arrest must be furnished immediately to an accused so that they can contest remand when produced before court.
Releasing a man accused of running a prostitution racket, HC faulted Delhi Police for supplying the grounds of arrest to the accused just an hour before the remand hearing in court. It also termed as "farce" the magistrate's remand order, which ignored the violation of section 50 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) that mandates written communication of the grounds of arrest to a person upon their arrest.
"In order to bring abundant clarity to the matter, this court would also observe that sufficient time must be given to an arrestee after the grounds of arrest have been served upon him in writing, to enable the arrestee to engage and confer with legal counsel. The test being that the arrestee must have a meaningful opportunity to resist his remand to police custody or judicial custody," Justice Anup J Bhambhani noted.
The high court was hearing a challenge to the arrest of a man accused of being the "manager" of a place engaged in the sexual abuse and exploitation of people and living off the gains of such activity. Justice Bhambhani pointed out that after recent Supreme Court rulings, "An investigating officer can no longer treat the matter of serving the grounds of arrest upon an arrestee with any levity" and stressed that "in the light of the constitutional safeguards available against curtailment of liberty, the word ‘forthwith' appearing in section 50 of the CrPC must be interpreted strictly," meaning that the the grounds for arrest "must be communicated to an arrestee immediately and without delay."
The court added that it is only when an investigating officer forms an opinion that there are some justifiable grounds to arrest a person that he would place the person under arrest. "Once the grounds for requiring a person's arrest have been formulated in the investigating officer's mind, there can possibly be no reason why those grounds cannot be reduced into writing and communicated to the person simultaneously at the time of arrest," it observed.
The high court said it was "constrained" to comment on the manner in which the magistrate "directed the investigating officer to serve the grounds of arrest in writing upon the petitioner after the petitioner was already produced in court; and then observing that since the remand hearing took place about an hour later, it was sufficient compliance with the law, reducing the petitioner's right under section 50 of the CrPC to a farce."