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Rationalising arrest laws

Lost in the flurry of the Bills hastily passed by Parliament last fortnight was a piece of legislation that deserved more attention than it got. It was the Bill amending the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). The omnibus amendment Bill touches on a number of important subjects, for example, special protection for rape victims and the trial of persons of unsound mind. The most significant changes relate to the law of arrest, with the new provisions going some way towards ba lancing the requirements of effective law enforcement with the necessity of protecting people from injustice and police harassment. Before the amendment, Section 41 of the CrPC permitted the police to arrest without warrant “any person who has been concerned with any cognisable offence,” even on the mere presence of “reasonable suspicion.” The new provisions stipulate that for cognisable offences punishable with a maximum imprisonment of less than seven years, arrests should be made only against the existence of “credible information” or a “reasonable complaint.” The police, moreover, are obliged to record in writing the reasons for making such arrests, which are permitted only under certain conditions, for example, to prevent the person from committing further crimes or tampering with evidence. When arrest is not justified under these conditions, the police may only issue a notice of appearance: asking the presence of a person suspected of the crime to appear before it or at any other specified place.

Other safeguards against the vast discretionary power of the police are stricter procedures during the making of an arrest, the introduction of regular medical examinations of those in police custody, and the establishment of police control rooms in all districts that must display the names and addresses of those arrested. The Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill 2008 is based substantially on a draft prepared by the Law Commission in its 177th report and reflects the spirit of several Supreme Court judgments on the power and procedure to make arrests. The hope is that the new provisions will act as a check on the notorious tendency of the police to be arrest-happy. The third report of the National Police Commission suggested that nearly 60 per cent of arrests were unnecessary and unjustified. It estimated that the abuse of the arrest law accounted for more than 43 per cent of expenditure on jails. By making this law more humane and rational, the amending Bill takes an important step towards improving what the Supreme Court once described as the hallmark of a nation’s civilisation — the methods it uses to enforce the criminal law.

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