Nov 15, 2026 · @Sahir Singh Virk
In a narcotics case with 60.79 kg of methamphetamine on the table and Section 37 of the NDPS Act standing guard, the Supreme Court released the accused on bail anyway. The reason was a single question about time. When does the 24-hour deadline under Article 22(2) of the Constitution actually begin: when the officer writes “arrested” in the memo, or when the person first stops being free to walk away? The Court’s answer is that the clock starts when liberty stops.
The case: a truck of ginger, 60 kg of Yaba, and a missing 18 hours
On the morning of 29 September 2025, the Divisional Preventive Force of the Customs Division, Agartala, acted on a tip-off. A truck loaded with ginger was said to be carrying methamphetamine (“Yaba”) tablets towards Agartala. The team set an ambush near Khowai, followed the truck, and watched its occupants hand a sack to a man on a motorcycle. All four were stopped on the spot.
The sack held 11.03 kg of tablets. Back at the Customs office, officers found two more trolley bags buried under the ginger. The total came to 60.79 kg, more than a thousand times the commercial quantity. On paper, it was the kind of case in which bail is almost never granted.
The agency’s own timeline decided the case:
| When | What happened |
| 29.09.2025, 02:00 pm | Accused intercepted; first seizure; NDPS case registered on the spot |
| 29.09.2025, 05:00 pm | Second seizure completed at the Customs office |
| 30.09.2025, 11:00–11:15 am | Formal arrest recorded under Section 42(1)(d) NDPS Act |
| 30.09.2025, 04:45 pm | Accused produced before the Judicial Magistrate |
The Special Judge and the Tripura High Court both refused bail, relying on the twin conditions of Section 37 of the NDPS Act. In the Supreme Court, senior counsel Mr. Rouf Rahim made a simple point. Measured from 02:00 pm on 29 September, the accused reached the Magistrate almost 27 hours later. The Court called for an affidavit from the Investigating Officer. That affidavit admitted the interception at 02:00 pm and tried to explain what came after it.
The ratio decidendi: “arrested” and “detained” mean the same thing
Article 22(2) says that every person who is “arrested and detained in custody” must be produced before the nearest magistrate within 24 hours, excluding only the journey time. The Union argued that these are two different things. In its view, a person can be “detained” for search and enquiry without being “arrested”, and the clock starts only at formal arrest.
The Supreme Court rejected that argument. Because the phrase is conjunctive, the two words carry one meaning: the Constitution recognises no detention apart from arrest. In the Court’s words (para 58):
“…the prescription of 24 hours time period would commence the moment a person is detained by the arresting authority suspecting him to have committed an offence, when his liberty is effectively curtailed. To that extent, the words appearing in clause (2) of Article 22 i.e. ‘arrested’ and ‘detained’ are synonymous. Any attempt to draw an artificial distinction between ‘arrest’ and ‘detention’ would dilute or negate the fundamental protection guaranteed by the Constitution under clause (2) of Article 22.”
The ratio, in one line: the 24-hour period under Article 22(2) and Section 58 BNSS (Section 57 CrPC) runs from the moment a person’s liberty is effectively curtailed, not from the arrest time an officer chooses to record. Only the journey to the magistrate can be excluded. A breach vitiates the arrest and entitles the person to immediate release.
Detention vs arrest: the distinction that no longer holds
Three High Courts had built a careful theory around the gap between stopping someone and formally arresting them:
- Orissa HC, Aryaman Pattnayak: a “temporary disruption of liberty” during search and seizure is not arrest. Detention rests on reasonable suspicion and is investigatory; arrest needs reasonable belief and is accusatory.
- Madras HC, Kannan: time spent completing the mandatory steps under Sections 42, 43 and 50 NDPS before arrest cannot be counted in the 24 hours.
- Kerala HC, Arun K. Thomas: a Section 67 NDPS enquiry creates a “buffer zone” in which the 24-hour countdown “remains in abeyance” until formal arrest.
The Supreme Court held that none of these lay down the correct law. Its objections were direct. There is no such thing as a “temporary disruption of liberty”. A test based on a “short investigatory hold” invites the obvious question of who decides how short is short. And a buffer zone in which liberty is curtailed without an arrest being shown is, in the Court’s words, “unconstitutional” (para 43).
The Court drew instead on older and plainer authority:
- Niranjan Singh (1980), per Krishna Iyer J.: a person in the physical hold of an officer with coercive power is in custody. Claims that the police took someone into “informal custody” or “detained him for interrogation” are, in his words, “unfair evasions of the straightforwardness of the law”.
- Deepak Mahajan (1994): a person is under arrest once they are deprived of the liberty to go where they please.
- Bombay HC, Ashak Hussain Allah Detha (1990): “detention in custody for interrogation” is unknown to law. The arrest begins with the restraint, not with the time the officers write down. The Court also noted that the Bombay judgment had condemned the practice of manipulating arrest records.
The Court also explained why this matters. Khatri (the Bhagalpur blindings) and D.K. Basu both recorded that the worst custodial abuse happens in exactly this window, when an arrest goes unrecorded or a deprivation of liberty is described as “prolonged interrogation”. The 24-hour rule exists to close that window.
How NDPS cases must now be read
NDPS investigations involve many formalities. Under Section 50 the accused must be offered a gazetted officer or a magistrate before a personal search. Under Rule 3(4) of the 2022 Seizure Rules, seized drugs must be classified, weighed and packed in the presence of witnesses and the accused. The Union argued that these steps take time and that the time should not count. The Court disagreed on several points.
1. Formalities do not stop the clock. None of Sections 42, 43, 50 or 67 of the NDPS Act, nor Rule 3, prevents an officer from producing the detainee within 24 hours. The work can continue after the magistrate grants remand. In the Court’s words, whether these provisions inhibit production within 24 hours is a question to which the answer is “an emphatic no” (para 40).
2. Section 42(1)(d) is not a licence to hold someone indefinitely. The power to “detain and search” and, if proper, arrest is real. But once a person is held, Article 22(2) applies. A statute, special or not, cannot be used to interpret the Constitution; it is the other way round (para 55).
3. Najmunisha does not help the prosecution. Its remark that search and seizure is a “temporary interference” with rights was made while assessing Section 67 confessions, not Article 22(2). “Nothing more should be read into those observations” (para 47.1).
4. Section 37 cannot save an illegal detention. In this case, despite a commercial-quantity recovery, the breach of Article 22(2) alone entitled the accused to release. The twin conditions of Section 37 did not come into it. Going further, the Bench said it had “reservations” about State of Punjab v. Sukhwinder Singh @ Gora, which held that Article 21 must operate within the framework of Section 37. It reiterated that when Article 21 is violated, Section 37 “would have to give way”. It relied on K.A. Najeeb (a 3-judge bench), Satender Kumar Antil, Mohd. Muslim and other decisions, and observed that Sukhwinder Singh may be per incuriam. These remarks are obiter, because Sukhwinder Singh was decided by a coordinate bench and the Court stopped short of a final ruling. They will still carry weight in every NDPS bail court.
5. On the facts: the arrest was deemed to have happened at 02:00 pm on 29.09.2025, so production was due by 02:00 pm the next day. Production at 04:45 pm was a “clear breach” that vitiated the arrest and made continued custody “illegal and unconstitutional” (para 66).
The other determinations you should know
A second, independent limit: reasonableness. Section 58 BNSS (Section 57 CrPC) says detention without warrant must not last longer than is “reasonable” in the circumstances, and never more than 24 hours. The Court treated these as two separate limits. Here, the search ended at 05:00 pm on 29 September but the arrest was recorded only at 11:00 am the next day. No one explained that 18-hour gap, and the Court said 18 hours in custody without judicial oversight leaves “misuse and abuse of authority a clear possibility” (para 67). So even detention inside 24 hours can be unlawful.
The magistrate is no longer a rubber stamp. “Remand is never a mechanical exercise” (para 18). At every production, the magistrate must now:
- Record the actual date and time when the person’s liberty was first curtailed.
- Check the 24 hours from that time, and order release forthwith if they were exceeded.
- Check whether the detention, even within 24 hours, was longer than reasonable, and decline remand if it was.
Judicial discipline. The Court criticised the Kerala HC Single Judge in Arun K. Thomas for departing from a coordinate bench’s decision in Biswajit Mandal. The matter should have gone to the Chief Justice for a larger bench.
Rights are read broadly. Relying on Sakal Papers, M. Nagaraj, I.R. Coelho and Jaishri Laxmanrao Patil, the Court said a fundamental right must be interpreted to further its purpose. It must not be whittled down by literalism or by “ifs and buts”.
Custodial safeguards. The Court recalled Paramvir Singh Saini, under which CCTV with audio must cover every police station and every interrogation office of the CBI, NIA, ED, NCB and similar agencies.
Nationwide reach. The judgment is to be circulated to every DGP, the Registrar General of every High Court and every State Judicial Academy (para 70).
The outcome. The appeals were allowed and the High Court’s order was set aside. The appellants are to be produced before the Special Court within 7 days and released on bail.
What this means for you: a practical checklist
If a family member has been picked up in an NDPS, PMLA or any other criminal case, the first question is no longer only “what was recovered?” but also “what time was it?” Lawyers should now:
- Find the first moment of restraint. Compare the interception or seizure time in the seizure memo, the panchnama, the complaint or the FIR with the time in the arrest memo. Where the documents are silent, call records, CCTV and witness accounts can help.
- Count 24 hours from that moment. Exclude only the journey to the magistrate, and nothing else: not the search, the weighing, the sampling, the questioning or the paperwork.
- Raise it at the first remand. Ask the magistrate to record the actual time of detention, as the Court now requires.
- Look for unexplained gaps. Even within 24 hours, a long unexplained delay between the end of the search and the formal arrest can defeat remand under Section 58 BNSS.
- Use it at the bail stage. Rely on Sujit Das (paras 58, 43, 66, 67 and 69). A proven breach of Article 22(2) is a ground for release that does not depend on the merits, even where Section 37 applies.
The bottom line
Sujit Das turns a familiar constitutional promise into a working rule. Freedom is lost when a person is stopped, not when an officer writes down that they were stopped. Agencies now have a clear incentive to record arrests honestly and produce people promptly, and magistrates have a clear duty to check.
Navlaw & Associates advises and represents clients in NDPS, PMLA, bail and white-collar matters before the District Courts and the Punjab & Haryana High Court in Chandigarh, and across Punjab, Haryana and Delhi. To discuss a case, call +91 97806 16532 / +91 83605 47092 or write to navlaw.associates@gmail.com.
Disclaimer: This article is for general information only and is not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts; please consult a lawyer about your situation.