24-hour deadline to produce accused in court starts from moment of detention: SC

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the 24-hour deadline for producing a detained person before a magistrate begins from the time of detention, not from the time of formal arrest, holding that authorities cannot use the artificial distinction between the two to delay judicial scrutiny.A bench, comprising Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice Atul S Chandurkar, said that counting the 24-hour period only from the formal arrest would violate the constitutional mandate under Article 22(2) and Section 56 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS)."There cannot be any temporary suspension of a fundamental right," the Supreme Court observed.The bench directed magistrates to record the date and time of detention and verify whether the 24-hour constitutional limit for producing the person before them has been followed. "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. This is beyond the mandate of clause (2) of Article 22. The only exception the Constitution itself provides is the time necessary for the journey from the place of arrest to the court of the magistrate," the Court pronounced, according to a Live Law report.The court made it clear that the time spent in custody before formal arrest cannot be excluded from the 24-hour calculation, ruling that any such interpretation would undermine the protection against detention without timely judicial oversight. "Therefore, the dichotomy that the period of 24 hours for the purposes of clause (2) of Article 22 commences from the completion of such search and seizure and only from the time of arrest recorded by the arresting authority is not only unsustainable in law but is entirely unconstitutional," the bench added.The court also observed that Article 22(2) uses the phrase "every person who is arrested and detained in custody", with the terms 'arrested' and 'detained' being joint and conjunctive, and therefore carrying the same meaning.It said the Constitution does not recognise detention independent of arrest.Rejecting any artificial distinction between arrest and detention, the bench said such an interpretation would raise questions about who gets to decide what constitutes a brief period of investigation and when such detention crosses that threshold.The observation was made when the bench was hearing appeals filed by four persons challenging the Tripura High Court's refusal to grant them bail in an Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act case.They were detained during a search and seizure operation at 2 pm on September 29, 2025, but their formal arrest was recorded only at 11 am the following day.The bench held that they should have been produced before a magistrate within 24 hours of their detention on September 29.Noting that they had remained in custody for around 18 hours without judicial oversight, the court held that their detention violated Article 22(2) and ordered their immediate release.The court also underscored the need for judicial oversight of detention, citing instances of custodial violence.- Ends