The Supreme Court has told cops not to arrest people just because they can or because they have to file a charge sheet.
Arrests can cause irreparable harm to a person’s reputation and self-esteem, according to the Supreme Court, which urged police officers not to make arrests routine just because the law gives them the authority to do so.
“Personal liberty is an important aspect of our constitutional mandate,” emphasised a bench of justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Hrishikesh Roy while disapproving of the practice of arresting people in criminal cases even when investigations can be completed without sending the accused to jail.
“The occasion to arrest an accused during investigation arises when the custodial investigation becomes necessary or it is a heinous crime or where there is a possibility of influencing the witnesses or the accused may abscond. Merely because an arrest can be made because it is lawful does not mandate that arrest must be made,” noted the bench.
The court was adamant that there must be a distinction made between the existence of the power to arrest and the justification for using it.
“If an arrest is made routine, it can cause incalculable harm to the reputation and self-esteem of a person. If the Investigating Officer has no reason to believe that the accused will abscond or disobey summons and has, in fact, throughout cooperated with the investigation we fail to appreciate why there should be a compulsion on the officer to arrest the accused,” underlined the bench.
The court made the remarks while hearing a pre-arrest bail petition filed by a man who was named as an accused in a case of cheating and forgery filed in Uttar Pradesh in 2014. Despite the fact that he had not been arrested in the previous seven years when he joined the investigation, the police moved to arrest him because the charge sheet was about to be filed in court. On July 9, the Allahabad high court refused to grant him protection from arrest, forcing the accused to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The arrest memo was issued because the trial court wanted the accused in custody before the charge sheet could be taken on record under Section 170 of the Criminal Procedure Code, according to the UP government’s lawyer in the Supreme Court (CrPC). When there is enough evidence to prosecute the accused, Section 170 states that police officers must take the accused “under custody” to a competent court for trial at the time the charge sheet is filed.
“We are of the view that if the Investigating Officer does not believe that the accused will abscond or disobey summons he/she is not required to be produced in custody. The word ‘custody’ appearing in Section 170 of the CrPC does not contemplate either police or judicial custody but it merely connotes the presentation of the accused by the Investigating Officer before the court while filing the charge sheet,” held the bench.
“It (the law) does not impose an obligation on the Officer-in-charge to arrest each and every accused at the time of filing of the charge sheet,” it added. It pointed out that the legal position has to be made clear since the Supreme Court has been regularly coming across cases where the accused has cooperated with the investigation throughout and yet on the charge sheet being filed, non-bailable warrants have been issued on the ground that there is an obligation to arrest the accused and produce him before the court.
In this case, the court overturned the high court’s order and granted the accused immunity from arrest on the condition that he continue to cooperate with investigators and appear before the trial court when the charge sheet is filed.
“When the appellant has joined the investigation, the investigation has been completed, and he has been roped in after seven years of registration of the FIR, we can think of no reason why at this stage he must be arrested before the charge sheet is taken on record,” it said.
