24-Hour Custody Clock Starts From Detention, Not Formal Arrest, Rules Supreme Court in Sujit Das v. Union of India

Case: Sujit Das v. Union of India
Citation: 2026 INSC 1195
Date of Judgment: 05 November 2026
Court: Supreme Court of India
Coram: Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice Atul S. Chandurkar
Proceedings: SLP (Crl) Nos. 12451-12453 of 2026

Court Observation

“The Constitution does not recognize any detention divorced from arrest. Thus the prescription of 24 hours time period would commence the moment a person is detained by the arresting authority suspecting him to have committed an offence, when his liberty is effectively curtailed.”

Summary

The Supreme Court has held that the 24-hour period under Article 22(2) of the Constitution for producing a person before a magistrate begins from the moment the person’s liberty is curtailed by detention, and not from the time the police formally record the arrest. Any attempt to split detention from arrest to stretch the constitutional clock is unsustainable, the Court said, and there can be no informal buffer period in which a person is held for questioning without the protection of Article 22(2).

The Court set aside the Tripura High Court’s refusal of bail and directed that the appellants be produced before the jurisdictional Special Court within seven days and released on bail on appropriate terms. The appellants had been detained at 2 PM on 29 September 2025 during a search and seizure operation in Tripura, but were shown as formally arrested only at 11 AM the next day and produced before a magistrate at 4:45 PM, nearly three hours after the 24-hour deadline had expired. The Court also held that the stringent bail conditions under Section 37 of the NDPS Act cannot override the fundamental right to personal liberty under Article 21.

Key Holdings

• The 24 hours under Article 22(2) commence from the date and time of detention, when liberty stands curtailed, and not from the time of formal arrest.
• Article 22(2) does not sanction exclusion of the time taken for inquiry or investigation before arrest; the only exception is the time necessary for the journey from the place of arrest to the court of the magistrate.
• A breach of the 24-hour requirement vitiates the arrest and renders continued detention beyond the deadline illegal and unconstitutional; the person must be released forthwith.
• Detention must not extend beyond a reasonable period even within the 24 hours, in terms of Section 58 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023.
• At production, the magistrate must record the actual date and time of detention and check compliance with the 24-hour deadline, and may decline remand if the detention was unreasonably long.
• The decisions of the Orissa High Court in Aryaman Pattanaik, the Madras High Court in Kannan and the Kerala High Court in Arun K. Thomas, which allowed pre-arrest detention to be excluded, do not lay down the correct law; the Kerala High Court’s view in Biswajith Mandal was approved.

Directions Issued

• The appellants are to be produced before the jurisdictional Special Court within a maximum of seven days, after which they are to be released on bail on appropriate terms and conditions.
• Magistrates must record the actual date and time of detention at the time of production and verify compliance with the 24-hour deadline; on a breach, the person shall be released forthwith.

Background

The appeals arose from a Tripura NDPS case in which the appellants were detained during a search and seizure operation on 29 September 2025. The Special Judge rejected bail on 30 March 2026 and the Tripura High Court did so on 29 April 2026, relying on the twin conditions of Section 37 of the NDPS Act. The Supreme Court took up the Article 22(2) point, which had not been argued before the High Court, on 21 September 2026 and called for an affidavit from the investigating officer. The allegations in the NDPS case remain to be tested at trial.

Related Articles

• Five Days of Illegal Detention Must Cost Rs 1.25 Lakh, Rules Allahabad High Court
• Activist’s 2011 Arrest Outside Prison Was Illegal, Rules Bombay High Court

Judgment Link: Read the full judgment (PDF)

Disclaimer: This is a summary prepared for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should refer to the official judgment for the authoritative text.