Sunday, December 5, 2010

Arrest should be the last option: SC

The Supreme Court has ruled that arrest should be the last option used by police as unnecessary incarceration of a person violates the fundamental right to personal liberty.
"The arrest should be the last option and it should be restricted to those exceptional cases where arresting the accused is imperative in the facts and circumstances of that case," the apex court said in a judgement.


"Personal liberty is a very precious fundamental right and it should be curtailed only when it becomes imperative according to the peculiar facts and circumstances of the case," the court said.
A Bench of justices Dalveer Bhandari and K S Radhakrishnan also said that anticipatory bail granted to a person should continue till the conclusion of the trial and no conditions should be imposed for the accused to surrender for obtaining a regular bail. "A great ignominy, humiliation and disgrace is attached to arrest. Arrest leads to many serious consequences not only for the accused but for the entire family and at times for the entire community. Most people do not make any distinction between arrest at a pre-conviction stage or post-conviction stage," they said. "The proper course of action ought to be that after evaluating the averments and accusation available on the record, if the court is inclined to grant anticipatory bail, then an interim bail be granted and notice be issued to the public prosecutor," Justice Bhandari said.

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