By Rajesh Pandey
Holding that arrest without disclosing the reason is illegal, the Allahabad High Court has directed the director general of police (DGP) UP to issue a circular in this connection. With this, the court set aside the arrest memo issued against the petitioner.
The division bench comprising Justice Mahesh Chandra Tripathi and Justice Prashant Kumar allowed the writ petition filed by Manjeet Singh alias Manjeet Singh Chana, against whom a case of cheating was registered at Police Station Milak of Rampur district.
The petitioner’s counsel argued that the reasons and grounds of arrest were not communicated to the petitioner at the time of his arrest by the police. The arrest memo did not contain any column on ground of arrest and reason of arrest. Further, no opportunity of hearing or no opportunity to the petitioner was given for defending his custodial remand.
“The grounds of arrest are communicated in writing to the person concerned at the time of arrest, as per mandate of Article 22(1) of the Constitution of India as well as the statutory provisions under section 50 of criminal procedure code (CrPC).”, pleaded petitioner’s counsel
Thepetitioner’sr counsel further argued, “Immediately after the arrest, the petitioner was produced before the
remand magistrate on December 26, 2024, and was remanded to judicial custody through a printed remand order, which does not mention whether any opportunity of hearing was granted to the accused to contest his custodial detention.”
The court, while quashing the arrest of the petitioner, observed, “In the instant matter, admittedly, no such effort had been made by the learned Magistrate to ensure adequate legal aid to the accused petitioner and appropriate opportunity of hearing at the time of judicial remand. Even the arrest memo does not contain any column regarding the grounds of arrest of the petitioner. This very issue is primarily the bone of contention between the parties in the instant matter.”
“Accordingly, this, being a clear non-compliance of the mandate under Section 50 of the Code which has been introduced to give effect to Article 22(1) of the Constitution of India, 1950, we are inclined to set aside the impugned order given law laid down by the apex court time and again in its various judgments.”
The court then in its decision dated April 9 directed, “Let the order be communicated to Director General of Police, Uttar Pradesh through Registrar General of this Court and accordingly, a circular be issued to all the Commissioners of Police/ SSPs/ SPs for necessary compliance of section 50 and 50A (now Section 47 and 48 BNSS) in the light of the observations made above.”
