Held at 2 pm, shown arrested at 11 am next day: Supreme Court starts 24-hour clock at the hold
Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice Atul S. Chandurkar order the release on bail of three men held in a 60.79 kg Yaba case and reject the idea of a pre-arrest buffer zone under NDPS procedure.
The Supreme Court on 5 November 2026 held that the 24-hour limit in Article 22(2) of the Constitution begins when a person is detained and his liberty curtailed. It does not begin when the investigating agency chooses to record a formal arrest.
The ruling came in a Tripura case in which three men were intercepted in a truck carrying 60.79 kg of methamphetamine (Yaba) tablets. They were shown arrested about 21 hours after interception and produced before a magistrate more than 26 hours after it.
A bench of Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice Atul S. Chandurkar set aside the Tripura High Court’s refusal of bail. It also disapproved three High Court judgments that had treated the hours before a formal arrest as outside the constitutional clock. The judgment, written by Justice Bhuyan, is marked reportable.
A truck, a ginger consignment and a motorcycle
The prosecution case is that Inspector Rahul Sharma of the Divisional Preventive Force, Customs Division, Agartala, acted on secret information on 29 September 2025. Three men were said to be travelling to Agartala in a truck with narcotics hidden in a load of ginger.
His team set up an ambush six kilometres from Khowai Chowmuhani at around 8 am. The truck, registration TR-06-1767, was sighted at about 9.05 am and followed. At around 1 pm in the Shanitala Noabadi area, a man arrived on a motorcycle and met the occupants of the truck.
The occupants took a white plastic sack from the cargo bed and handed it to him. The team then moved in. It detained all four men and recovered 11.03 kg of Yaba tablets from the sack.
A second search of the truck turned up two trolley bags hidden under the ginger sacks. By the State’s count the total came to 60.79 kg. The first seizure memo records 2 pm as the time of seizure at the spot.
Because of the quantity and a crowd at the spot, the men, the independent witnesses and the seized goods were taken to the Customs Division office. The second seizure was completed there at 5 pm on 29 September.
Arrested on paper the next morning
The NDPS case, numbered 04/CL/NDPS/DPF/AGT/2025-26, was registered on 29 September under Sections 21(C), 22(C), 23(C), 25, 25A, 28 and 29 of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985. The arrest memos nevertheless show the four men arrested on 30 September at 11 am and 11.15 am.
The three appellants are Sujit Das, the man on the motorcycle, and Suman Das and Rupak Sarkar, who were in the truck. Raju Das, the driver, was the fourth man arrested. A charge-sheet was filed on 27 March 2026.
The Special Judge in West Tripura rejected the bail applications on 30 March 2026. The Tripura High Court did the same on 29 April 2026, in a common order covering the three applications.
Before the High Court the accused argued that a breach of Section 36 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 should override the bar on bail in Section 37 of the NDPS Act.
Counsel for the Union conceded that no near relative or respectable local person had signed the arrest memo. He called it a prima facie violation but said Section 37 still stood in the way.
The High Court relied on State of Punjab v. Sukhwinder Singh @ Gora, a 2026 ruling of this Court. It held that Section 37 is mandatory and that Article 21 rights must be exercised within its framework. It found prima facie material against the accused and refused bail.
The point nobody had argued below
The appeal reached the Supreme Court as a special leave petition, and notice issued on 24 July 2026. At the hearing on 21 September 2026, senior counsel Mr. Rouf Rahim raised an issue the High Court had not been asked to decide.
The FIR was dated 29 September 2025, and the men had been intercepted and searched around 2.30 pm that day, he said. They were shown arrested only on 30 September and produced before the Magistrate at about 5 pm. That, he argued, was done to get around Article 22(2).
The bench directed the Investigating Officer to file an affidavit on the point. The judgment sets out its contents at length, and the dates in it became the core of the decision.
The affidavit said detention began only with the formal arrests at 11 am and 11.15 am on 30 September. The hours before that, it said, were needed to finish statutory formalities. The men were taken into judicial custody on 30 September at 4.45 pm.
Why the State said no clock ran
The Investigating Officer listed what filled the interval. There was the search and seizure, which needed a Section 50 notice, a gazetted officer and an actual search. There was weighing, sampling and the seizure memo before independent witnesses.
There was also questioning to trace the supply chain and identify the men, plus travel and administrative delay, because the place of interception is remote from the office. The affidavit added that at 2.30 pm all four were questioned about further contraband and that a second search followed.
Additional Solicitor General Mr. Raghavendra P. Shankar argued that the men were only intercepted at 2 pm, not formally detained. Detention began with the formal arrests, he said.
In the alternative, he said the clock could start at 5 pm on 29 September, when the second seizure ended. The production before the Magistrate at 4.30 pm the next day would still be within 24 hours.
He argued that Sections 42(1)(d) and 43(b) of the NDPS Act allow detention for the purpose of search. He added that Rule 3(4) of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Seizure, Storage, Sampling and Disposal) Rules, 2022 requires weighing and packaging in the presence of the person from whom drugs were recovered, and that this time falls outside Article 22(2).
He relied heavily on the Kerala High Court’s ruling in Arun K. Thomas v. Narcotics Control Bureau. He also cited the Madras High Court in Kannan v. State of Tamil Nadu and the Orissa High Court in Aryaman Pattnayak v. Union of India.
He accepted that detention before arrest cannot run for an unduly long period. His case was that detention and arrest are different things in NDPS cases.
The appellants: custody is custody
Mr. Rahim told the bench that the State was drawing an artificial line between detention and arrest that neither the Constitution nor any statute supports. When the men were intercepted at 2 pm, he said, they were under the search team’s control with their liberty fully curtailed.
The 24 hours therefore ran from that moment. A formal arrest at 11 am the next day, he argued, served only to avoid the deadline. Production before the Magistrate at 4.45 pm on 30 September was then late.
He pointed out that the complaint was lodged and the case registered on the spot, on reasonable belief after a field test. The men reached the Customs office at about 2.30 pm after the case was registered.
He relied on Niranjan Singh v. Prabhakar Rajaram Kharote, the Bombay High Court’s Ashak Hussain Allah Detha and Hanumant Jagganath Nazirkar, the Telangana High Court’s T. Ramadevi and the Kerala High Court’s Biswajit Mandal. He also pressed the Section 36 BNSS point and argued that Section 37 gives way when Article 21 is violated.
The text of Article 22(2)
Justice Bhuyan began with the text. Article 22(2) requires that every person who is arrested and detained in custody be produced before the nearest magistrate within 24 hours of arrest, excluding the time needed to travel to the magistrate. No such person may be held beyond that period without a magistrate’s authority.
The bench called this a positive mandate with no exception. The only time that may be deducted is the journey time. The Constitution, it said, permits no other period to be excluded.
Section 57 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, carried into Section 58 of the BNSS, repeats the 24-hour limit. It adds that detention without a warrant must not last longer than is reasonable in all the circumstances. The bench said that makes remand a judicial act, not a mechanical one.
The judgment also walks through the NDPS provisions the State relied on. Section 42 lets an officer enter, search, detain and, if he thinks proper, arrest.
Section 50 requires a person to be taken to a gazetted officer or magistrate for search if he asks. Section 67 allows enquiry and examination, and Rule 3 of the 2022 Rules governs classification and weighing.
Khatri, D.K. Basu and the custody cases
The bench said the Supreme Court has repeatedly called the 24-hour rule a binding constitutional command. In Khatri v. State of Bihar, decided against the background of the Bhagalpur blindings, the Court said production before a magistrate must be strictly and scrupulously observed.
In D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal the Court recorded that the worst violations occur during investigation. Police resort to screening arrests by not recording them, or by describing the deprivation of liberty as prolonged interrogation.
The bench also drew on Directorate of Enforcement v. Subhash Sharma, which held that a breach of Article 22(2) vitiates the arrest and requires the bail court to release the accused. It recalled its own ruling in Jaskaran Jeet Singh Deol v. State of Punjab, which described the Article 22(2) mandate as firm and unshaken.
On the meaning of custody, it relied on Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer in Niranjan Singh. A person in the physical hold of an officer with coercive power is in custody. Claims that police took a man into informal custody or detained him for interrogation, but did not arrest him, were called unfair evasions of the law.
It also relied on Deepak Mahajan, which treats a person deprived of liberty to go where he pleases as under arrest.
High Courts that had ruled each way
The Bombay High Court in Ashak Hussain Allah Detha had held that arrest is complete when restraint begins. The label the investigating officer attaches, and the time he records, do not matter, it said. It added that detention in custody for interrogation is unknown to law.
The Telangana High Court in T. Ramadevi held that 24 hours runs from the time a person is first apprehended. The Bombay Division Bench in Hanumant Jagganath Nazirkar held the same and refused to exclude pre-arrest medical examination time. The Kerala High Court in Biswajit Mandal had also held that the clock runs from effective detention.
Against these stood the Orissa High Court in Aryaman Pattnayak, the Madras High Court in Kannan and a later single judge of the Kerala High Court in Arun K. Thomas.
The Orissa court reasoned that detention is investigatory and based on suspicion, while arrest is accusatory and based on reasonable belief. It held that detention during search and seizure is not arrest unless it stretches beyond a short investigatory hold. This Court had declined to interfere with that order on 18 August 2026.
The Madras court said time spent on NDPS statutory procedure before arrest cannot count towards the 24 hours. The Kerala single judge read Article 22(2) as needing both arrest and detention in custody, and described Section 67 enquiry as a buffer zone in which the clock stays in abeyance.
Why the bench rejected the buffer zone
Justice Bhuyan said the attempt to separate detention from arrest was unwarranted. Who would decide what a short investigatory period is, he asked, and when detention goes past it?
On the NDPS argument, the bench asked whether compliance with Sections 42, 43 and 50 or Rule 3 stops the officer from producing the person before a magistrate within 24 hours. Its answer was an emphatic no. The officer can produce the detainee and continue procedural steps after any further remand.
“There is no such thing called temporary disruption of liberty.” (para 57)
The bench held that Article 22(2) does not allow any exclusion for enquiry or investigation before arrest. It called the creation of a buffer zone where liberty is curtailed but no arrest is shown unconstitutional.
It faulted the Kerala single judge on another ground as well. Because Biswajit Mandal was a coordinate bench decision, the judge should have referred the question to the Chief Justice for a larger bench, not taken a contrary view.
Sukhwinder Singh and the bar on bail
The High Court had leaned on Sukhwinder Singh @ Gora, where a two-judge bench said the Article 21 right to speedy trial must be exercised within Section 37 of the NDPS Act in commercial-quantity cases. The bench said it had reservations about those observations.
Article 21 rights are fundamental rights, it said, and cannot be tinkered with lightly even under special statutes. It listed rulings of this Court, including Union of India v. K.A. Najeeb and Satender Kumar Antil v. CBI, which hold that the rigour of Section 37 must give way when Article 21 is violated.
It noted that Sukhwinder Singh could be argued to be per incuriam because K.A. Najeeb was decided by three judges. It declined to say more, since Sukhwinder Singh is a coordinate bench ruling.
The bench added two further distinctions. In that case the accused had been in custody from 10 January 2024 and was granted bail on 18 February 2026 with only 2 of 24 prosecution witnesses examined. And Article 22(2) was not before that bench at all.
Reading a fundamental right generously
Before construing clause (2), the bench set out how this Court reads fundamental rights. It cited Sakal Papers, M. Nagaraj, I.R. Coelho and Jaishri Laxmanrao Patil for a broad, purposive reading. A statute, it said, cannot guide the reading of the Constitution; the guidance runs the other way.
It then turned to the words of the clause. The expression arrested and detained in custody is conjunctive, not disjunctive, the bench said. That makes the two words mean the same thing.
“the Constitution does not recognize any detention dehors arrest” (para 58)
The 24 hours therefore begin the moment a person is detained by the arresting authority on suspicion of an offence and his liberty is effectively curtailed. Any artificial distinction between arrest and detention would dilute the protection, the bench said.
It linked the rule to custodial violence. The bench recalled Khatri and D.K. Basu and the CCTV directions in Shafhi Mohammad and Paramvir Singh Saini. Those directions covered police stations and also offices of agencies such as the CBI, NIA, ED and NCB where interrogation takes place.
A late production and 18 unexplained hours
On the facts, the bench relied on the State’s own account. The men were intercepted at 2 pm on 29 September 2025, were under the control of the search team from then, and the NDPS case was registered on the spot.
For Article 22(2), it held, the arrest took place at 2 pm on 29 September. The men had to be produced before the Magistrate before 2 pm on 30 September. They were produced at 4.45 pm, so there was a clear breach that vitiated the arrest and made detention after 2 pm on 30 September illegal and unconstitutional.
The bench added a second, separate finding under Section 58 BNSS. By the State’s own account, search and seizure ended at 5 pm on 29 September. The formal arrests came at 11 am and 11.15 am the next day, a gap of 18 hours.
No explanation had been given for the 18 hours. Eighteen hours in custody without judicial oversight, the bench said, leaves a clear possibility of misuse and abuse and cannot be called reasonable.
Conclusions for officers and magistrates
The bench summarised its conclusions in nine points. The 24-hour timeline under Article 22(2) runs from the time of detention, when liberty stands curtailed, not from the formal arrest. If detention runs past 24 hours before production, the person must be released forthwith.
No time may be excluded from the 24 hours except the journey time from the place of arrest to the magistrate’s court. The Orissa, Madras and Kerala rulings, in Aryaman Pattnayak, Kannan and Arun K. Thomas, do not lay down the correct law.
The detaining authority must keep in mind both the 24-hour limit and the Section 58 BNSS rule that detention within it must not exceed a reasonable period.
At production, the magistrate must record the actual date and time of detention, when the person’s liberty was curtailed, and check compliance from that time. If the deadline was breached, the person is to be released forthwith.
The magistrate must also test whether detention within 24 hours was longer than reasonable. If so, the magistrate may decline remand.
Order
The Supreme Court allowed the criminal appeals and set aside the Tripura High Court’s order of 29 April 2026. It directed that the three appellants be produced before the jurisdictional Special Court within a maximum of seven days. They are to be released on bail thereafter on terms the Special Court considers appropriate.
The bench held that their detention breached Article 22(2) and ran beyond a reasonable period under Section 58 BNSS. It did not decide the Section 36 BNSS argument.
Counsel for the appellants was Senior Counsel Mr. Rouf Rahim. The Union was represented by Additional Solicitor General Mr. Raghavendra P. Shankar.
The Court directed that a copy of the judgment be circulated to all Directors General of Police of the States and Union Territories, to the Registrars General of the High Courts and to the Directors of the State Judicial Academies. Pending applications were disposed of.