Chhattisgarh HC Quashes Remand Orders, Holds 48-Hour Police Custody Without Transit Remand Violated Articles 21 and 22
The Chhattisgarh High Court at Bilaspur held that picking up an accused from Haryana and transporting him across States without transit remand made the entire detention unconstitutional, vitiating the subsequent remand orders.
A Division Bench of the High Court of Chhattisgarh at Bilaspur, comprising Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Ravindra Kumar Agrawal, has quashed two remand orders passed by a Judicial Magistrate First Class at Ambikapur, holding that Chhattisgarh Police apprehended a Rohtak resident on the evening of 28 June 2026, transported him across Haryana, Delhi, and Uttar Pradesh into Chhattisgarh over approximately 48 hours without obtaining a transit remand, and only produced him before a Magistrate on 30 June 2026. The court declared the intervening detention illegal and violative of Articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution of India and Section 187 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS). The bench directed immediate release of the petitioner on a personal bond of Rs. 5,00,000 with two sureties. The judgment makes explicit what the constitutional text already requires: a remand order founded upon an illegal detention cannot cure that illegality.
The FIR and the Petitioner’s Alleged Role
The underlying FIR — Crime No. 3/2025 at the Cyber Police Station, Range Surguja, Ambikapur — was registered on 22 July 2025. The complainant, one Mr. Ravi Mohan Goswami, alleged that unknown persons had lured him into investing in the share market through mobile applications called Money Trade 365 and Skytrade, and had defrauded him of Rs. 21,15,000 deposited in 84 instalments across multiple bank accounts. Offences were registered under Sections 318(4) and 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 and Section 66D of the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008.
The State described the broader investigation as pertaining to an inter-State cyber fraud and hawala syndicate in which fraudulent proceeds, layered through trading applications, payment gateways, and cryptocurrency wallets, allegedly exceeded Rs. 1,000 crore. The State alleged that the petitioner, Jitesh Anand @ Jitu, worked as a primary hawala cash carrier for the main accused, physically collecting cash that was converted into USDT cryptocurrency and remitted abroad.
How the Petitioner Was Taken From Rohtak to Ambikapur
The petitioner’s account, placed before the court through Senior Advocate Mr. Amit Chadha assisted by Mr. Nitesh Jha, Mr. Harjas Singh, and Mr. Gourav Patel, was that Chhattisgarh Police officials picked him up from his residence at House No. 514/11, Sora Kothi, Gau Karan Road, Rohtak, Haryana, on the evening of 28 June 2026, without communicating any grounds for the detention or informing his family. He was taken to Police Station City Thana, Rohtak, then driven to Delhi, where he was held overnight at the Chhattisgarh Bhawan. On 29 June 2026, the police team departed for Ambikapur by road, passing through Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. No transit remand was obtained at any point. His advocate, who had been told the petitioner would be produced at Dwarka Courts in Delhi, waited there from noon till 6 p.m. on 29 June 2026 without any production.
The State’s counter-version, presented by Additional Advocate General Mr. Praveen Das, was markedly different. According to the State, the police had registered their arrival at Rohtak vide GD Entry No. 033 dated 28 June 2026 at 16:07 hours and their departure vide GD Entry No. 049 at 22:57 hours, noting that the petitioner’s father, Mr. Vijay Kumar, was present and informed. The team also registered their presence at Police Station Shamli, Uttar Pradesh, on 29 June 2026 at 09:33 hours while tracing another accused. On 29 June 2026, the police served a formal notice under Section 35(3) of the BNSS requiring the petitioner to appear before the Investigating Officer on 05 July 2026. The petitioner was then, according to the State, “let off” in the presence of his brother Hunny Anand. The State contended that the petitioner himself made a handwritten endorsement on the notice expressing willingness to travel with the police team voluntarily, due to his own logistical and financial constraints.
The petitioner was formally arrested at the Range Cyber Police Station, Ambikapur, on 30 June 2026 at 10:55 a.m., after the Investigating Officer found incriminating material. He was produced before the JMFC, Ambikapur, the same day at 4:50 p.m. The JMFC remanded him to judicial custody on 30 June 2026 and, on 03 July 2026, granted two days of police custody remand.
Whether the Endorsement on a Notice Shows Voluntary Travel
The pivotal factual question for the bench was whether the petitioner had been deprived of his liberty from the evening of 28 June 2026 or whether he voluntarily accompanied the police from Delhi to Ambikapur after being served the Section 35(3) BNSS notice on 29 June 2026.
The court did not accept the State’s voluntariness argument. It observed that the petitioner had been taken from his residence, remained continuously with the police from the evening of 28 June 2026 till his production before the Magistrate on 30 June 2026, and had travelled across several States entirely in the company of police personnel under their control and supervision. The bench observed that “the alleged voluntariness of such travel has to be viewed in the backdrop of the unequal position occupied by a citizen confronted by a police party investigating a serious criminal offence.” A mere endorsement on a notice, made while the person is already under police control, cannot establish that he was free to decline or to proceed independently.
The court also rejected the Supurdnama (Annexure R/4) — the document the State relied upon to show the petitioner had been handed over to his brother — as unreliable. The document did not disclose the name or designation of the official who purportedly handed over the petitioner, nor did it mention the date, time, or place of such handing over. These omissions, the bench found, rendered it devoid of evidentiary value and indicative of fabrication to deny the illegal custody.
The court also noted an internal contradiction in the State’s position: the Section 35(3) BNSS notice served on 29 June 2026 directed the petitioner to appear before the SHO on 05 July 2026, yet he was formally arrested on 30 June 2026 — before the notice period had expired — at the police station itself.
Constitutional and Statutory Framework on Transit Remand and Grounds of Arrest
The bench set out the governing framework clearly. Article 21 guarantees that no person shall be deprived of personal liberty except according to procedure established by law. Article 22(2) mandates production before the nearest Magistrate within twenty-four hours of arrest, excluding journey time. Section 187 of the BNSS embodies this constitutional guarantee. Where an investigating agency apprehends a person outside its territorial jurisdiction and transports him to another State, it is ordinarily required to obtain a transit remand from the nearest Magistrate — unless the facts unmistakably demonstrate that the person was not under any restraint and had voluntarily accompanied the police.
The bench held that the constitutional protection under Article 22(2) becomes operative not from the moment of a formal arrest memo but from the point when an individual’s liberty is substantially curtailed and he is placed under police control. Accepting the State’s argument would, the court reasoned, allow the investigating agency to keep a person in exclusive custody for an indefinite duration under the guise of voluntary cooperation and then prepare a formal arrest memo at its convenience — rendering the constitutional safeguard illusory.
On the obligation to communicate grounds of arrest, the bench drew on the Supreme Court’s decisions in Vihaan Kumar v. State of Haryana {SLP(C) No. 13320/2024} and Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra {(2026) 1 SCC 500}. From Mihir Rajesh Shah, the bench extracted the Supreme Court’s holding that grounds of arrest must be communicated in writing in the language the arrestee understands, and that if written communication at the moment of arrest is not possible, it must be done orally and then in writing at least two hours before the remand hearing. Non-compliance renders the arrest and subsequent remand illegal.
The bench also relied on Manubhai Ratilal Patel v. State of Gujarat {(2013) 1 SCC 314} for the proposition that a Magistrate ordering remand performs a judicial function and is obligated to satisfy itself that remand is genuinely necessary — not to pass remand orders automatically. The bench noted the Supreme Court’s observation in that case that once an arrest is shown to be illegal, the State must establish that the Magistrate directed detention after applying its mind to all relevant matters.
Why the Remand Orders Could Not Stand
Having held that the petitioner’s liberty was effectively curtailed from the evening of 28 June 2026, the court found that the respondents were under a constitutional and statutory obligation to produce him before the nearest Magistrate within twenty-four hours or to obtain a transit remand before crossing State boundaries. Admittedly, neither was done. The petitioner was produced directly before the JMFC, Ambikapur, only on 30 June 2026, well beyond the twenty-four-hour window running from the evening of 28 June 2026.
The bench found that the record did not satisfactorily establish compliance with the mandatory requirement of communicating grounds of arrest at the point when liberty first stood curtailed. The subsequent service of the grounds of arrest — after the petitioner had already remained under police control for a considerable period — could not retrospectively validate the detention.
The JMFC’s orders of 30 June 2026 and 03 July 2026 were faulted on a separate ground as well. The bench found that those orders disclosed no consideration of the specific objections the petitioner had raised about the absence of transit remand, the detention exceeding twenty-four hours, and the constitutional infirmities of the arrest. Judicial remand, the court held, cannot cure an illegal arrest or validate an unconstitutional detention. Once the initial detention is found unlawful, every consequential order founded upon it becomes legally unsustainable.
The court expressly rejected the State’s argument that the scale of the alleged fraud — an organised inter-State cyber syndicate with proceeds alleged to exceed Rs. 1,000 crore — could dilute the constitutional guarantees: The Division Bench allowed WPCR No. 388 of 2026 by its order dated 03 August 2026. The remand orders dated 30 June 2026 and 03 July 2026 passed by the JMFC, Ambikapur, were quashed. The court declared that the detention of the petitioner from the evening of 28 June 2026 till his production before the JMFC on 30 June 2026 was illegal and violative of Articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution and the provisions of the BNSS, 2023. The petitioner, Jitesh Anand @ Jitu, was directed to be released from custody in connection with Crime No. 3/2025 upon furnishing a personal bond of Rs. 5,00,000 with two solvent sureties of the like amount each, one of whom must be a local surety and the other a member of the petitioner’s family, to the satisfaction of the trial court. He must surrender his passport before the trial court, must not leave the country without prior permission, and must appear before the Investigating Officer and the trial court as required and cooperate with the investigation. The bench clarified that the order does not preclude the investigating agency from proceeding with the investigation in accordance with law, provided it complies with constitutional and statutory safeguards. The observations in the judgment are confined to the legality of the arrest, detention, and remand and do not express any opinion on the merits of the allegations in the FIR. No order as to costs was passed.Order