Supreme Court says 24-hour arrest deadline begins when person is detained

The Supreme Court has ruled that the 24-hour deadline for producing an arrested person before a magistrate begins from the moment their liberty is curtailed, and not from the time the police formally record the arrest.

A bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S Chandurkar held that excluding the period of detention before a formal arrest from the 24-hour deadline would violate Article 22(2) of the Constitution. The ruling came in appeals filed by four people challenging the Tripura High Court's rejection of their bail pleas in a case under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

The four accused were detained on September 29, 2025, at around 2 pm during a search and seizure operation. However, the police formally recorded their arrest only at 11 am the following day. The Supreme Court held that they should have been produced before a magistrate within 24 hours of their detention on September 29.

According to a LiveLaw report, the court found that the accused had been kept in custody for around 18 hours without judicial oversight, violating their constitutional rights. It consequently ordered their immediate release.

"Article 22(2) does not sanction exclusion of the time taken for inquiry or investigation before the arresting authority could effect arrest of the detainee," the bench observed.

The court clarified that the only period that can be excluded while calculating the 24-hour deadline is the time required to travel from the place of arrest to the magistrate's court. It rejected the argument that detention before a formal arrest should be treated differently, observing that fundamental rights cannot be temporarily suspended during an investigation.

The bench also disapproved of earlier rulings by the Orissa High Court in Aryaman Pattanaik, the Kerala High Court in Arun K Thomas and the Madras High Court in Kannan, which had allowed pre-arrest detention to be excluded from the 24-hour calculation. It held that these judgments did not lay down the correct position of law under Article 22(2).

The Supreme Court, however, approved the Kerala High Court's ruling in Biswajith Mandal, which held that the 24-hour period begins when a person's liberty is effectively curtailed rather than when the formal arrest is recorded.

The bench also issued directions to magistrates, asking them to record the actual date and time from which an accused person's liberty was curtailed when they are produced before them. Magistrates must verify whether the 24-hour deadline has been followed and order immediate release if it has been breached.

Further, magistrates must examine whether the period of detention was reasonable under the circumstances, even if it falls within the 24-hour limit. If the detention is found to be unreasonable, they can refuse to authorise remand.

The court also directed investigating agencies to ensure that detention does not continue beyond a reasonable period, as required under Section 58 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS).

The appeals arose from a case involving the seizure of 11.03 kg of yaba tablets. The Tripura High Court had rejected the accused's bail pleas, holding that the stringent conditions under Section 37 of the NDPS Act applied because the quantity seized was commercial.

The High Court had also rejected their contention that the arrest procedure under the BNSS had been violated, relying on an earlier Supreme Court ruling in State of Punjab v Sukhwinder Singh @ Gora, which held that prolonged incarceration alone could not override the statutory restrictions on bail under the NDPS Act.