State of Haryana (2025), held that every arrested person must be properly and meaningfully informed of the grounds for his arrest. Failure to provide information shall amount to a violation of Article 22(1) of the Constitution and Section 50 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Section 47 of the BNSS, 2023). T he constitutionality of arrest in India needs to be examined to reinforce democratic values and ensure that the authority of the state and the liberty of the citizen are properly balanced. Recently, the Supreme Court, in Vihaan Kumar v.
The central development
Sometimes, communication is conducted with the arrested person’s relatives, which appears to be a formality. This would be in line with the Constitutional philosophy of putting a check on any possible arbitrary exercise of power. The court has opined that if the initial arrest was unconstitutional, subsequent remand orders would also be deemed illegal. Thus, this judgment sets a strong precedent for safeguarding personal liberty and procedural fairness in India’s criminal justice system. Arrest is different from detention. arrest is a formal police custody with a probable cause of commission of an offence While detention is a temporary hold for investigation and the person is not charged with any offence. Thus, detention occurs when the police have reasonable suspicion. On the other hand, the police need stronger probable cause to formally take a person into custody. Further, in non-cognisable offences like simple hurt, defamation, etc., a warrant is needed for arrest, whereas in cognisable offences such as murder, rape, etc., arrest is without a warrant. In Arnesh Kumar v. The law should not be used as a tool to harass someone. Considering this, it is obvious that allowing criminal prosecution to continue based on frivolous and false allegations would amount to an abuse of legal process and would also be detrimental to the concept of natural justice, which is perhaps the most significant form of justice enshrined in the Constitution. The necessity must be justified.
Moreover, to fulfil the requirements of Article 22(2) and Section 57 of the CrPC. (Section 58 of the BNSS, 2023), the arrest memo must contain the time of arrest. These constitutional and legal provisions say that the police must present the arrested person to a local magistrate within 24 hours, excluding the travel time. The court also condemned degrading treatment in custody, affirming the right to dignity under Article 21, and directed the State to amend its procedures to prevent future violations. Article 22 deals with both arrest and detention. State of Bihar (2014), the Supreme Court laid down guidelines for arrests to prevent the misuse of criminal laws. The police must determine whether an arrest is necessary under Section 41 of the CrPC (Section 35 of the BNSS).
Therefore, the arrested person must be directly informed of the grounds of arrest in a manner that enables him to understand them. Because the power to arrest has been given to the police, thus, routine arrests cannot be made merely.
Considering this, the verdict says that communicating the details of the arrest to relatives or providing ambiguous records does not satisfy the constitutional requirements. In the guidelines, the court said that arrests should be an exception in cases where the punishment is less than seven years.
