Magistrate chides erring cops for not serving offenders a notice before arrest

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The long arm of the law turned to smack erring officials on Friday. Metropolitan Magistrate PH Karve took court clerks, remand officers and policemen to task for wrongfully arresting several accused without giving them a notice, thus violating constitutional rights and not following a Supreme Court judgement.

On Friday afternoon, counsel SS Sawalkar represented four people booked under various bailable Indian Penal Code sections by the Versova police station. Sawalkar argued his clients were arrested before being given a notice under section 41(d) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).

Violated rights
By doing this, cops violated constitutional rights of the alleged accused and didn't follow SC guidelines from the Arnesh Kumar vs State of Bihar judgement, which says that a person booked under bailable offence should be served a notice under CrPC 41(d).

Karve, who was chairing the holiday court in Bandra found the submission valid. He asked the concerned remand officer and court clerk why they hadn't followed the said rules. Both of them passed the blame on the investigative officer (IO). Karve then asked them to call IO at the court.

Chaos and tension
But that was not all, he also asked his team to segregate all such cases and demanded answers for their lapses. This led to chaos and tension in court. Approximately six such cases were identified in places like Juhu, Kherwadi, MIDC and Dharavi. Most of the IOs reached the court within no time and tried explaining their lapses.

A court source said Karve also communicated the lapses to Zone DCPs over phone and demanded answers. Kiran Kale, senior police inspector, Versova police station said they had arrested the accused to prevent any anti-social activity. He added he will discuss this with his team and guide them upon receiving any notice from the court in the said matter. However Sawalkar said cops can't just arrest any alleged accused to prevent crime assuming that they could do anything bad in future. Court warned all the officers to follow guidelines and avoid any such lapses in future.

4
No. of alleged accused held without prior notice

6
No. of cases where accused have been held without notice

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