Police Functioning Demystified - Part VI Rights of an Arrested Person

Rights of an arrested person :

(1) If the arrested person is a female, the arrest cannot happen after sunset or before sunrise

(2) Any arrested person has the right to know the grounds for his arrest and he should be given access to a lawyer and his family should be informed about his arrest.

(3) He should be produced before a Magistrate within 24 hours of his arrest. In case of weekends or Public Holidays, he can be produced before a Holiday Magistrate.

(4) Police do not have the right to handcuff the arrested person, unless there is a danger of him turning violent or if there are chances of him escaping.

(5) Even before an arrest or just for the sake of questioning, the Police cannot force a female to visit the Police Station without the female’s consent. If the female so desires, she can ask the Police to visit her residence or any other place that she prefers, to question her.

(6) Arrest is not mandatory in every case. Only if Police feels the need for custodial interrogation or if there is any danger of the accused tampering with evidence or intimidating witnesses, an arrest is warranted. Police cannot arrest an accused in the normal course.

(7) Arrests are not generally carried out on Festival days when the full neighborhood is celebrating or during functions in the household. It happens only in the movies where the hero is arrested from his marriage pandal.

There are many other departments in the Mumbai Police viz. the Crime Branch - CID, NCB, EOW, ATS etc. which generally comes into the picture only when an investigation is required in specialized cases. They are involved both in Intelligence collection as well as specialized investigation.

We will talk more about the ever-mysterious CID in Part VII.