Gurugram: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has asked the state machinery in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh to explain whether they are following Supreme Court directions on how and when police can arrest a person.
Justice Sudeepti Sharma, hearing a batch of eight contempt petitions Tuesday, directed the Director Generals of Police and Chief Secretaries of the two states and the Union Territory to file affidavits on compliance with the Supreme Court’s directions in the Satender Kumar Antil case of 2022.
The 2022 ruling requires police to follow a fixed procedure before arresting a person in cases carrying up to seven years in jail.
The affidavits, along with copies of the notice formats currently being used by police, have to be filed two days before the next hearing on 16 September.
The case
The matter arises from a string of contempt petitions filed against police officers, led by the case of Sandeep Kumar versus Pankaj Nain, a 2007 batch IPS officer of Haryana cadre, and others. Multiple similarly placed petitions filed between 2023 and 2026 have been clubbed together.
During arguments, amicus curiae and senior advocate Ankur Mittal drew the court’s attention to a 2018 Delhi High Court judgment in Amandeep Singh Johar versus State of NCT of Delhi, which had laid down a detailed procedure for how police must issue notices under Section 41A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) before arresting a person.
Section 41A was inserted into the CrPC after the Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Arnesh Kumar versus State of Bihar, which held that arrest should not be automatic in cases where the punishment is up to seven years, and that police must first issue a notice asking the accused to join the investigation.
The 2018 Delhi High Court order went further and specified exactly what that notice should look like, how it should be served, how long an accused can seek to postpone appearing, and what happens if the police officer concerned fails to follow the drill, including possible contempt of court.
That procedure was not confined to Delhi for long. When the Supreme Court decided the Satender Kumar Antil case in 2022, it took note of both the Delhi High Court’s order and the standing order the Delhi Police had subsequently issued to implement it, and held that this framework would help prevent unwarranted arrests.
The court then directed every state government and union territory to put in place similar standing orders of their own for Sections 41 and 41A of the CrPC.
What the court wants to know now
Four years on, the Punjab and Haryana High Court now wants to know whether Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh have complied with the directions.
Justice Sharma’s order records that the DGPs and Chief Secretaries of all three have been asked to file affidavits spelling out precisely how the Supreme Court’s 2022 directions have been complied with “in true letter and spirit”, along with the actual notice and acknowledgement formats their police forces are using on the ground.
The court also disposed of several smaller applications during the hearing, including requests from the state to waive costs imposed on some officers for delayed compliance in earlier rounds of the case, and took on record compliance affidavits filed by officers including a DSP posted in Khanna and an ASI posted in Derabassi.
Arguments in the main matter remain part-heard and will resume on 16 September.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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