Arrest vitiated: a notice naming the crime number and the sections is not the grounds of arrest
Justice Hiten S. Venegavkar releases a murder accused forthwith with no bail bond and no surety, holds the arrest and all custody founded on it vitiated under Article 22(1) and Section 47 of the BNSS, and directs the Director General of Police to review the forms in use.
A twenty-three-year-old labourer from Shrirampur is accused of shooting a man dead from a moving motorcycle. The charge sheet runs to twenty-six witnesses; the prosecution has a pistol, a magazine and a live cartridge attributed to him, CCTV, mobile-phone material and identification proceedings. He asked the Bombay High Court at Aurangabad for release and, through counsel, gave up every argument on the merits of that case. He argued one thing only: that nobody ever told him in writing why he was being arrested. On 1 October 2026 Justice Hiten S. Venegavkar held that the written factual grounds had not been furnished, that his arrest and all the custody built on it were therefore vitiated, and that he had to be released forthwith — without a bail bond, without a surety, and without a four-week pause to let the victim's family reach the Supreme Court first.
A shooting in Shrirampur
On 31 December 2025 at about 2.50 p.m., Aslam Shabbir Shaikh was returning on a scooter with another man after a condolence visit. Near St. Luke Hospital in Ward No. 1, Shrirampur, two persons on a motorcycle fired at them. Aslam suffered firearm injuries and was later declared dead at a hospital in Ahilyanagar; a bullet is said to have grazed his companion's back. The first information report was lodged at about 3.49 a.m. on 1 January 2026 by a man who was not an eyewitness, and it described the assailants as two unknown persons.
Investigation attributed the shooting to the applicant and a co-accused, with two more men said to have watched the deceased's movements and relayed his location. Crime No. 01 of 2026 at Shrirampur City Police Station was registered for offences under Sections 103(1), 109(1) and 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 and Section 3 read with Section 25 of the Arms Act, 1959. The informant's affidavit attributed one shot to the applicant and described a planned attack intended to spread terror.
The judgment records all of this, and then says exactly why: the material “explains the gravity of the accusation and the opposition to release”, and its correctness is for the trial, not for this order. The application was brought under Section 483 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 and styled as a regular bail application, but counsel confined it to the legality of the arrest. So the Court decided that objection and its consequence “without adjudicating the applicant's entitlement to bail on the merits of the accusation”.
What the notice actually said
The arrest is recorded at about 12.31 p.m. on 1 January 2026. The applicant was produced before the Judicial Magistrate First Class at about 5.30 p.m. the same day by video conference. Police custody was granted until 6 January and extended to 9 January. On 9 January the applicant and a co-accused filed a written application saying their grounds of arrest had never been communicated, asking that further remand be refused and that they be released. The Magistrate rejected it and remanded them to judicial custody.
The document the prosecution relied on as compliance with Section 47 of the BNSS mentioned three things: the crime number, the penal provisions, and the fact that the applicant was being arrested for investigation of a cognizable and non-bailable offence. It did not state the occurrence he was alleged to have taken part in, the role attributed to him, or any factual basis connecting him to the offence.
Counsel's argument on the signature is the one worth remembering. A signature can acknowledge receipt of a document and its contents; it cannot establish the communication of facts that do not appear in the document. The printed entry in the arrest form recording that grounds were informed suffers from the same deficiency. And the intimation to the applicant's brother under Section 48 serves a distinct statutory purpose — telling a relative that a person has been arrested — which cannot be substituted for the communication the law requires to be made to the person arrested.
An unsigned order, and a family that found out from social media
The procedural history of the hearing is set out at length, and it is part of the story.
An order had been dictated in open court on 29 September 2026, after the applicant's advocate and the Additional Public Prosecutor were heard extensively. It remained unsigned, still being typed and corrected. On 30 September at 10.30 a.m. the informant mentioned the matter and sought a hearing, stating that he had learnt of the proceeding and the proposed release from social media, and that the notice earlier directed through the investigating officer had not reached him. The matter was taken up that afternoon and, on his counsel's request for accommodation, adjourned to 1 October. On that day counsel for the deceased's wife also appeared, seeking to be heard in her own right as a victim. Both requests were allowed, the affidavit and authorities were considered, both counsel were heard, and the applicant's counsel was given a reply.
Two points of law were settled in passing. The deceased's wife is a victim within Section 2(1)(y) of the BNSS, and her participation is independent of the State's appearance, as Jagjeet Singh v. Ashish Mishra, (2022) 9 SCC 321 explains; the opportunity must be effective, and the hearing of the prosecution alone cannot be treated as an answer to a victim who wishes to place her own concerns before the court. And because the earlier dictation had never been signed, taking the matter up again was not a review of a signed judgment contrary to Section 403 of the BNSS — Kushalbhai Ratanbhai Rohit v. State of Gujarat, (2014) 9 SCC 124 draws that distinction. The adjudication therefore proceeds on the complete hearing rather than on any supposed finality of the unsigned dictation.
The informant, apprehending intimidation of witnesses before their examination, had also asked in the alternative for restrictions on the applicant's entry into the town, weekly attendance and a prohibition on contact with witnesses. Both his counsel and the wife's counsel argued that Jaskaran Jeet Singh Deol concerned a different factual situation and could not be read as permitting a Bench of equal strength to overrule earlier decisions without a reference to a larger Bench. The applicant's reply was that this arrest took place after Mihir Rajesh Shah, and that the objection had been raised within eight days.
Why the law asks for facts and not labels
The core question, as the Court framed it, was whether the documents and the judicial record relied on by the State established communication of the grounds as required by the Constitution and the statute. The answer begins from what Article 22(1) is for: it enables the person arrested to understand why the authority has deprived him of liberty, to instruct his advocate, and to oppose his custody.
From that purpose the conclusion follows almost mechanically. “Mere knowledge that a murder has occurred, or that a particular crime number has been registered, does not necessarily convey the factual basis for arresting him.” Communication of the grounds and access to counsel are complementary safeguards, not alternatives: the presence of counsel is material, but it “does not dispense with communication of the information upon which counsel must be instructed”. An advocate who does not know what his client is said to have done cannot oppose the remand.
Section 47 of the BNSS gives statutory expression to the duty to inform a person arrested without warrant of the full particulars of the offence or the other grounds for the arrest. Section 48 requires that information about the arrest and the place of detention be given to a relative, friend or nominated person, and casts a duty on the Magistrate to satisfy himself about compliance with it. Each duty must be discharged on its own. A single document may serve more than one statutory purpose if its actual contents and communication meet the respective requirements — but telling a relative that an arrest has happened does not, without more, tell the arrested person why.
What the Sessions Court had accepted
The applicant's bail application before the Additional Sessions Judge, Shrirampur was rejected on 7 May 2026, and the judgment sets out what that court had treated as sufficient compliance: the notice mentioning the crime number and the statutory offences; the document intimating his brother of the arrest; the observations in the Magistrate's remand order; and the availability of legal representation to the applicant before court from inception. The absence of an affidavit from the applicant himself about his antecedents was also weighed against him.
That is a recognisable list — each item is real, and none of them is the thing the Constitution asks for. The High Court worked through the acknowledged notice, the arrest papers, the relative-intimation documents, the remand record, the objection of 9 January, the earlier orders and the State's answer, and found that the furnishing of written factual grounds to this applicant had not been established.
The characterisation of the defect is deliberate and narrow: “The defect is an absence of substantive factual communication, not a typographical mistake or a demand for further detail in an intelligible account already furnished.” This is not a judgment about imperfect paperwork. It is about paperwork that never contained the grounds at all.
What a remand court must now do
Having decided the case, the Court turned to why it keeps recurring, and the observation is unusually direct about judicial practice. Magistrates and courts dealing with remand applications, it records, ordinarily “record simple communication by asking accused routine questions about his custody and ill-treatment or complaints against prosecution”. With the Supreme Court's directions now in existence, every court dealing with a remand application is duty bound to physically verify statutory compliance.
What that verification involves is then specified. The communication actually furnished, its language, the date and time of delivery, and the material evidencing delivery should all be available for scrutiny. If an exceptional inability to furnish an immediate writing is asserted, the explanation and the subsequent compliance must be examined. The Magistrate must ascertain whether the communication conveys grounds personal to the arrestee and permits an intelligible response to the request for custody.
And then the limits, which matter as much: no preliminary trial is required and no reproduction of the entire evidence. A concise finding on the material examined will suffice, with specific reasons where an objection is raised. Police records may be called for without creating a general entitlement to the case diary. A signature or a printed assurance is relevant — but it “cannot automatically replace examination of the contents”.
What the police records must show
The directions to the police side follow the same logic. The preserved copy must correspond to the factual grounds actually furnished, with a reliable record of the language, mode, date and time of communication. An exceptional inability to provide an immediate writing, any later delivery, and any refusal or inability to acknowledge should be recorded contemporaneously. A standard form, the Court notes, “is useful only if it provides for the actual grounds personal to the arrestee” — which is a precise diagnosis of what went wrong here.
The Director General of Police, Maharashtra is directed to circulate the judgment to the concerned police authorities, review the instructions and forms in use, and issue corrective instructions where necessary to secure the requirements laid down in Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra and Jaskaran Jeet Singh Deol v. State of Punjab. The Court is careful to add that these directions concern the implementation of those binding requirements, and prescribe neither a new universal form nor the disclosure of the entire prosecution evidence.
On the investigating officer, the judgment prescribes the transfer of the investigation to another officer and a departmental inquiry, while making clear that any adverse service consequence must follow that inquiry and its findings in accordance with law and is not predetermined by the judgment.
No stay for custody already found unconstitutional
Once the Court indicated it would allow the application, the senior advocate for the wife and the advocate for the informant asked that the release be kept in abeyance for four weeks so that they could approach the Supreme Court.
The request was rejected, and the reason is a single sentence of real force: the request “would continue the very custody found unconstitutional merely to facilitate a proposed challenge”. Once the Court had held the arrest vitiated and the detention unlawful and illegal, that custody could not be continued for any reason; the Supreme Court has specifically mandated that where an accused's custody is unconstitutional, he should be released forthwith.
The order
The application was allowed on the ground of violation of Article 22(1) of the Constitution and Section 47 of the BNSS. The arrest in Crime No. 01 of 2026 and the consequential custody founded on it were held vitiated for failure to establish the furnishing of the requisite written factual grounds.
The applicant was ordered released forthwith unless his detention was independently required in another case under a subsisting lawful order, with no bail bond or surety required. The Registry was to communicate the authenticated signed order to the concerned court and the prison authority, which were to give effect to it “without awaiting website uploading”.
No opinion was expressed on his entitlement to bail on the merits or on the truth of the allegations; the FIR, charge sheet and trial proceed in accordance with law, and he must attend on lawful process and not intimidate or influence witnesses or interfere with evidence. Any subsequent request for custody is to be made and considered strictly in accordance with Mihir Rajesh Shah and Jaskaran Jeet Singh Deol; if the investigating officer decides to seek rearrest, an application may be filed only after compliance with those directions, and the competent court must scrutinise that compliance and decide only after hearing the applicant.
Finally, the Registrar (Judicial) was directed to forward the judgment to the Director General of Police and to all Principal District and Sessions Judges, who are to circulate it to every judge in their districts for strict compliance. A single bail application, confined to one point and deciding nothing about a killing, thus leaves the court as an instruction to every remand magistrate in the State.