Supreme Court Starts 24-Hour Clock at Actual Detention

The Supreme Court of India ruled that the constitutional 24-hour deadline for producing a detained person before a magistrate begins when the person’s liberty is first curtailed, not when police formally record an arrest. The decision also led the court to order the release of appellants whose detention exceeded that limit in a drug case. A bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S. Chandurkar said the clock runs from actual detention. Only the time genuinely required to travel to the magistrate’s court may be excluded. The court said the Constitution does not allow an additional period for inquiry or investigation before an arrest is formally recorded. The ruling applies Article 22(2) of the Constitution and Section 58 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS). The court said detention must be reasonable even when it lasts less than 24 hours. Magistrates must record when a person was actually detained and check whether the constitutional deadline was met; they may refuse remand if detention was unreasonable, even within the 24-hour period. In Sujit Das v. Union of India, the appellants were held from 2 p.m. on September 29, 2025, and produced before a magistrate at...