Case Title: Siddharth v. State of Uttar Pradesh
The Supreme Court ruled that Section 170 of the Criminal Procedure Code does not require the Officer-in-Charge to arrest every accused person at the time the charge sheet is filed.
The court stated that some Trial Courts' practice of insisting on an accused's arrest as a pre-requisite formality for taking the charge sheet on record is incorrect and contradicts the very intent of Section 170 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
The Supreme Judge remarked in an appeal against the refusal of an anticipatory bail plea that the trial court had adopted the opinion that unless the individual is taken into custody, the charge sheet will not be entered on record under Section 170 of the Cr.P.C.
The court noted that several Delhi High Court judgements (Court on its motion v. Central Bureau of Investigation) have concluded that it is not necessary to take an accused into custody when the charge sheet/final report is produced in every instance involving a cognizable and non-bailable offence.
"The Delhi High Court is not alone in adopting this view, and other High Courts appear to have followed suit on the proposition that criminal courts cannot refuse to accept a charge sheet simply because the accused has not been arrested and produced before the court," the court observed, referring to the Gujarat High Court's observations in Deendayal Kishanchand & Ors. v. State of Gujarat.
The court remarked that the term "custody" in Section 170 of the Cr.P.C. does not refer to either police or judicial custody, but rather to the presentation of the accused before the court by the Investigating Officer when filing the charge sheet.
The court added that personal liberty is an important aspect of our constitutional mandate. It observed:
"The occasion to arrest an accused during investigation arises when the custodial investigation becomes necessary or it is a heinous crime or where there is a possibility of influencing the witnesses or accused may abscond. Merely because an arrest can be made because it is lawful does not mandate that an arrest must be made. A distinction must be made between the existence of the power to arrest and the justification for its exercise of it. If an arrest is made routine, it can cause incalculable harm to the reputation and self-esteem of a person. If the Investigating Officer has no reason to believe that the accused will abscond or disobey summons and has, in fact, throughout cooperated with the investigation we fail to appreciate why there should be a compulsion on the officer to arrest the accused."
The court noted that in the current case, the accused had joined the inquiry, that the investigation had concluded, and that he had been brought in seven years after the FIR was filed. "We can think of no reason why he should be arrested at this point before the charge sheet is taken on record", the judge stated while allowing the appeal.