Explained: Supreme Court’s 24-hour rule starts at detention, not arrest

If police pick you up, how long can they hold you before taking you to a magistrate? The Constitution says 24 hours. But from when? On Thursday (5 November), the Supreme Court settled that question: the clock starts the moment your liberty is curtailed, not when police formally write down an arrest.

Article 22(2) of the Constitution says every person who is arrested and detained in custody must be produced before the nearest magistrate within 24 hours, excluding the time needed for the journey to the court. Police have sometimes kept people for hours, during searches or questioning, before formally showing an arrest. The Orissa, Madras and Kerala High Courts had held that such pre-arrest detention could be left out of the 24 hours.

A bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S Chandurkar disagreed. “Article 22(2) does not sanction creation of any buffer zone where the liberty of an individual is curtailed for investigating purposes but not formally shown as arrested. Creation or contemplation of such buffer zone is unconstitutional,” the court said in its judgment in Sujit Das v Union of India.

The court laid down clear rules. The 24 hours run from the date and time of detention. If a person is held beyond that without being produced before a magistrate, they must be released from custody forthwith. The only time that can be left out is the journey from the place of arrest to the magistrate’s court.

Magistrates now have a bigger job. When a person is produced, the magistrate must record the actual date and time of detention and check whether the 24-hour limit was met. Even if it was, the magistrate can refuse remand if the person was held longer than was reasonable in the circumstances, under Section 58 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (Section 57 of the old CrPC).

The rule applies to special laws too. The court said these fundamental rights “cannot be tinkered with so lightly, not even under the special statutes”, The Hindu reported. The case itself was under the NDPS Act, the anti-drugs law.

The case came from Tripura. Four men travelling in a truck towards Agartala were detained during a search and seizure on 29 September 2025, LiveLaw reported. The seizure was over by 5 pm, but they were shown as formally arrested only at about 11 am the next day. “No explanation has been given for this delay of 18 hours,” the court said, calling it a period with “misuse and abuse of authority a clear possibility”.

The court set aside the Tripura High Court order that had denied them bail. It directed that they be produced before the special court within seven days and then released on bail. It also asked for the judgment to be sent to the police chiefs of every state and Union Territory, the high courts and state judicial academies, so that police stations and courts follow it.