Prabir Purkayastha v. State (NCT of Delhi) — 2024 INSC 414 · [2024] 6 SCR 666

An arrest whose legal foundation had not reached the person detained

Following the arrest of the director of a news organisation under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967, whose production before a remand judge occurred before the communication of an application to the legal representative whom he had engaged, the Supreme Court examined whether the absence of written grounds and the circumstances of the initial remand violated the protections governing deprivation of liberty. It did so without undertaking an assessment of the truth of the underlying criminal accusation.

Why the character of the alleged offence did not displace the right

The Court treated the question of communicated grounds as a constitutional issue which had to be answered before the seriousness of the allegations could justify continued custody, because the power to investigate an offence under a stringent enactment remains distinct from the conditions through which the State can lawfully deprive the person accused of liberty, whose protection could not depend upon whether the allegations attracted public concern or invoked an especially restrictive statutory regime. Its reasoning began from the importance assigned to personal liberty under Articles 20, 21 and 22 of the Constitution, through which the authority to interfere with an individual's freedom requires a legal foundation rather than the existence of suspicion alone, making strict attention to the safeguards necessary when the investigative agency relies upon a special criminal statute whose operation may expose the accused to substantial restrictions upon release.

The decision's reference to Roy V D reinforced that constitutional premise by recognising that Article 21 protects individuals rather than citizens alone, whose deprivation of liberty must therefore remain within the authority of law, although the reference did not convert the appeal into a general comparison between the rights of different classes of persons because its immediate purpose was to explain why an arrest which disregards the applicable protection cannot be accepted as lawful custody. The relevant constitutional concern consequently operated within the criminal proceedings instead of outside them, since communication of the grounds enables the accused to contest the restraint through the legal process while preserving the agency's opportunity to investigate through lawful means, whose continued availability did not require the Court to tolerate a breach of the conditions imposed upon the arrest already made. The Court's insistence upon those conditions did not suggest that allegations under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act must be treated lightly, because its reasoning concerned the legal means by which even a serious accusation may be pursued, whose gravity cannot supply information to the arrested person or replace the practical opportunity to contest custody which the Constitution requires.

Why the Court carried the reasoning of Pankaj Bansal into this arrest

The earlier decision in Pankaj Bansal provided an explanation of why communicated grounds must have a usable written form, which the Court considered relevant to the appeal notwithstanding the fact that the earlier case concerned arrest under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, because the issue was not whether the two enactments were identical in every respect but whether their provisions governing communication of the grounds protected the same constitutional interest. The comparison therefore concentrated upon the language requiring the person arrested to be informed of the grounds under Section 19 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and Section 43B of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, whose correspondence on that particular requirement enabled the reasoning to apply without assuming that every power, offence, condition of investigation or restriction upon bail was interchangeable between the two statutory schemes.

Other differences between the enactments did not answer the disputed question about communication, since a variation in the source or scope of an investigative power can coexist with a common obligation to tell the arrested person why that power has been used against him, whose significance derives from Article 22 rather than the agency's preference for a particular method of recording its reasons. The Court also considered the connection between the special enactment and the ordinary criminal procedure governing arrest and remand, through which the applicable provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 continued to operate insofar as they were not inconsistent with the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, making the particular statutory requirement part of a wider process of production before a judicial authority rather than a document which the agency could communicate whenever convenient after custody had already been authorised.

Its use of the earlier reasoning accordingly depended upon an identified legal connection, which prevents the judgment from being understood as an assertion that every provision of the two special enactments has the same effect, because the decisive relationship was between the common communication requirement and the constitutional opportunity to challenge the deprivation of liberty which that requirement serves. Within that relationship the Court regarded written communication as an operative safeguard rather than a matter of administrative presentation, whose relevance survives a change in the agency conducting the investigation because the arrested person's need to know and use the grounds remains the same when liberty is curtailed through the comparable statutory provision.

Why merely reciting the grounds aloud would not serve their purpose

The Court accepted the explanation in Pankaj Bansal that an arrested person must be able to place the grounds before a legal representative and pursue an effective response to custody, which cannot reliably occur when the person has been told an account orally but retains no written statement from which the factual basis of the arrest can be examined after the immediate encounter with the arresting officer has ended. A person undergoing arrest may be distressed and unable to remember every detail of a lengthy statement, whose importance becomes greater when the response has to address a restrictive bail regime or a request for police custody, so that the practical ability to challenge the restraint cannot properly depend upon an expectation that the accused will reproduce the investigator's oral account accurately from memory.

Written grounds also provide an identifiable object of consultation through which the individual and the person advising him can distinguish the alleged acts, the personal connection asserted and the basis upon which the agency claims authority to detain, whose examination enables a focused response rather than a general objection to the fact of arrest without knowledge of the circumstances invoked to justify it. The reasoning further recognised the difficulty of resolving a later dispute between an agency which says that it orally communicated the grounds and a person who denies receiving an adequate explanation, whose competing accounts may leave the constitutional safeguard dependent upon an uncertain reconstruction of the arrest encounter unless the communication has a form which can be produced and examined.

That difficulty supplied an additional reason for the written requirement rather than its exclusive foundation, because even an undisputed oral explanation may fail to equip an arrested person with the material needed for an effective challenge, whose legal significance depends upon the information remaining available for consultation instead of simply passing through the person's hearing at the moment of arrest. The safeguard consequently concerns the meaningful availability of the grounds rather than an empty formality, since a written record retained only by the investigative agency would not place its contents at the disposal of the individual whose freedom has been restrained, while an oral account which leaves no usable statement would not provide the continuing access required to exercise the corresponding legal rights.

Why the absence of an express reference to writing was not conclusive

The Court rejected the contention that the constitutional language could be satisfied without a written communication merely because Articles 22 and the relevant statutory provision do not expressly insert the word writing into the obligation to convey the grounds, since the meaning of communication must be determined by the right which it enables rather than reduced to the narrowest verbal description of an officer telling an arrested person something about the accusation. The connection between information and remedy was decisive because the Constitution protects an opportunity to oppose the deprivation of liberty through legal assistance, whose exercise requires sufficient knowledge of its basis rather than a token explanation incapable of supporting a purposeful response, making the practical function of the requirement central to its interpretation.

The Court found support for that interpretation in the constitutional treatment of preventive detention, through which the grounds must reach the person detained in a manner enabling an effective representation against the restraint, although the reference did not equate every feature of preventive detention with an ordinary criminal arrest because the common point concerned the effective communication of the basis upon which liberty had been taken away. The constitutional provisions employ corresponding language about informing the affected person of the grounds, whose earlier interpretation therefore supplied an answer to the suggestion that the absence of an express demand for a written document allowed the executive to choose an oral explanation which did not serve the protected opportunity, making the textual argument insufficient when separated from the established purpose of communication. The resulting interpretation preserved the relationship between the right and its exercise rather than adding an unrelated procedural preference, since the form of communication mattered precisely because a person who could not retain and use the grounds would lack the means through which the constitutional protection becomes effective, whose existence could otherwise remain nominal while custody continued upon a basis unavailable for meaningful challenge.

Why effective communication required an intelligible account

The Court's reliance upon Harikisan directed attention to what it means for grounds to be available to a person whose liberty has been curtailed, because physical delivery of material is insufficient where the person cannot acquire effective knowledge of the facts and circumstances on which the restraint rests, whose communication must therefore be assessed through the opportunity to make a useful representation rather than the mere presence of a document in the person's hands. In adopting that reasoning the Court emphasised the requirement that written grounds be provided in a language which the affected person understands, whose importance follows from the same relationship between knowledge and remedy because an unintelligible written statement cannot perform the function which the agency might equally fail to perform through an inadequate oral explanation.

Harikisan's treatment of oral translation or explanation reinforced the distinction between hearing about grounds and possessing the effective knowledge necessary to oppose the restraint, since an account of several alleged acts may contain particulars which cannot safely be reconstructed after delivery through speech alone, making a written intelligible communication important to the individual's capacity to respond to the actual grounds rather than a general impression of the accusation. The Court also relied upon Lallubhai Jogibhai Patel for the requirement that the basic facts constituting the grounds be imparted effectively and fully in writing, whose reasoning treated communication as a substantive constitutional act through which a purposeful representation becomes possible, instead of regarding the safeguard as fulfilled when an officer has verbally explained something but left the person without a usable statement.

These authorities concerned preventive detention, yet their explanation of effective communication addressed the very textual objection advanced in the appeal, because the corresponding constitutional language did not require the Court to disregard its established meaning when applying the protection to arrest, whose setting likewise involves the loss of liberty and the need to seek a remedy against that loss. The comparison accordingly supplied an interpretive reason tied to the function of the right rather than an assumption that preventive detention procedure governed the prosecution in every respect, which preserved the distinct statutory setting while explaining why the individual arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act could not be denied the written grounds necessary to make the applicable constitutional protection effective.

Why formal reasons for arrest were different from personal grounds

A central distinction in the Court's analysis concerned the difference between general purposes for taking an accused into custody and the basic facts connecting the particular person to the arrest, because the agency's statement that detention would assist investigation or prevent interference with evidence does not itself tell that person what conduct or information has made the agency regard his arrest as warranted. The arrest memo listed purposes which could apply across a wide range of criminal cases, including preventing further offences, facilitating investigation, protecting evidence, avoiding inducement or intimidation and securing attendance before the court, whose generality meant that they described categories of justification without conveying the personal factual basis which the appellant needed in order to challenge the specific deprivation of his liberty.

Those formal reasons could therefore appear in a document without satisfying the requirement to communicate the grounds, since the presence of writing answered only a question about the document's form while leaving unanswered the separate question whether its contents supplied the basic facts upon which this individual was arrested, whose knowledge would enable an objection directed to his own circumstances. The Court required the personal grounds to contain the relevant details available to the investigator which necessitated the arrest of the accused, whose communication would show why the general purposes were being invoked against him rather than somebody else, making the obligation incapable of fulfilment through a standard list which could accompany the arrest of almost any person accused of an offence.

This distinction did not require the Court to determine whether each formal purpose was genuinely present in the investigation, because the appeal could be resolved through the anterior failure to communicate the individual grounds, whose absence deprived the appellant of the means to contest either the asserted connection with the offence or the need for the custodial restraint through an informed response. It also explains why the Court rejected the High Court's view that the written arrest memo conveyed the grounds, since the actual document contained the generic reasons rather than the personal factual account required by the constitutional and statutory protection, making the conclusion below inconsistent with the record even though the memo had undoubtedly been prepared in writing.

Why the existence of an FIR did not establish communication

The FIR supplied the formal foundation for investigation but had not been placed in the public domain or provided to the appellant before the initial remand, whose later receipt therefore could not show that the grounds of arrest had been available to him when he needed to oppose the deprivation of liberty and the request for police custody. The Court noted that a request for the FIR had not produced a copy until after the relevant remand order, while its delivery to the appellant's chosen legal representative occurred still later, whose chronology prevented the State from treating the existence of that document within its own records as equivalent to information effectively reaching the individual whose arrest was being challenged.

A recorded accusation and a communicated ground perform related but different functions, because the former may initiate the criminal investigation while the latter must provide the arrested person with the basic facts explaining his own restraint, whose availability cannot be presumed merely because the agency has registered a case containing allegations against several persons or concerning a wider course of events. The Court nevertheless preserved the ordinary understanding that an FIR need not constitute an exhaustive account of the prosecution, since its purpose is to set the criminal process in motion while investigation supplies further material for the police report, making the failure in communication different from a ruling that every FIR must already contain every incident or evidentiary detail which the prosecution may subsequently rely upon. That qualification prevented the communication issue from becoming a final assessment of the allegation's evidentiary sufficiency, because the Court could identify that the grounds had not reached the appellant before custody was authorised without deciding whether further investigation would substantiate the offences or whether the eventual charge sheet would contain adequate material to support a trial.

Why the time of production mattered in this record

The Court considered the statutory requirement of prompt production under Sections 57 and 167 of the Code of Criminal Procedure through the operation of Section 43C of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, whose preservation of applicable ordinary procedure established the period within which the arrested appellant had to be brought before a judicial authority rather than explaining the unexplained haste with which the particular remand application was presented. The recorded afternoon arrest left a substantial period before the relevant production deadline on the following day, yet the appellant was produced at the remand judge's residence before six in the morning, whose significance arose from the surrounding exclusion of the legal representative already engaged rather than an independent rule that an early morning production necessarily renders every remand invalid.

The investigator knew that the appellant had engaged a legal representative who had attended the police station after the arrest, with contact details available to the officer, whose omission to give advance information about the proposed remand accordingly required an explanation which the Court did not find in the mere appointment of another person to provide assistance during the hurried production. Article 22 protects the opportunity to consult and be defended by a legal practitioner of choice, whose importance could not be removed by arranging an appearance which the appellant had not accepted while the person whom he had engaged remained unaware of the proposed proceeding, making the circumstances of production part of the Court's explanation of how the protected opportunity had been circumvented. The Court's criticism was therefore grounded in the known availability of the chosen representative, the unused opportunity to communicate before production and the sequence through which custody was authorised, whose combined effect supported its conclusion that the process had deprived the appellant of a meaningful chance to oppose the application rather than merely producing an inconvenient timetable for consultation.

Why communication after the order could not supply the missing opportunity

The recorded sequence showed that the appellant's relative received information about the production only after the time stated for the remand order, whose subsequent communication to the chosen representative could not place that representative in a position to oppose an application which had already resulted in the judicial authorisation of police custody. The Court relied upon the call records and the time recorded in the remand order rather than accepting a speculative alternative chronology, because the relevant issue was whether the grounds and an opportunity to respond had existed before the order was passed, whose answer depended upon the actual sequence disclosed by the record rather than a claim that the participants eventually communicated at some point that morning.

The transmission of the remand application through a messaging service likewise occurred after remand had been granted, which meant that even an application containing an account of the alleged grounds could not retrospectively provide the appellant with the opportunity to oppose that completed judicial act, whose constitutional significance attached to the point at which custody was authorised. Later information may allow a person to understand what has happened but cannot itself establish that the earlier decision followed the protected process, since the Court was examining the validity of the arrest and initial remand rather than asking only whether the appellant had eventually received documents which could be used in further litigation concerning continued detention. The distinction between eventual access and timely opportunity was consequently essential to the result, because the right to contest a proposed remand would otherwise be treated as satisfied through a communication made after the outcome had been fixed, whose effect would turn a safeguard against unlawful custody into an account of that custody supplied only once the deprivation had occurred.

Why retained grounds assist the response to restricted release

The Court reproduced and accepted the reasoning in Pankaj Bansal concerning the practical burden faced by an accused who must seek release under a stringent statute, whose ability to address the conditions imposed upon bail depends upon knowing the actual basis of the arrest instead of preparing a response to an undefined suspicion which the agency has not communicated in a form available for examination. The earlier reasoning referred specifically to Section 45 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, through which a court considering release ordinarily requires the accused to address restrictive conditions, but the Court used that explanation to identify the importance of effective knowledge rather than declare that Section 45 governed this appellant's prosecution under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, whose own statutory setting remained distinct throughout the comparison.

The reference consequently connected communication with the substance of the remedy which an arrested person may seek, because an opportunity to apply for bail has little practical value if the applicant does not know what facts the agency relies upon to sustain the arrest, whose absence would prevent the person from presenting an informed account even though the formal avenue of application remained open. This point also explains why communicating grounds cannot be postponed until the agency regards its investigation as complete, since the accused may need to oppose the immediate request for police custody or seek release before that later stage, whose timing makes the information necessary for the present exercise of rights instead of a document supplied only when the prosecution has finalised its accusation. The written account enables the response to remain directed to the grounds actually asserted, which can reveal whether the agency relies upon a particular act, a connection with another person or a course of conduct whose alleged significance the accused wishes to contest, making consultation useful through specificity rather than through a general assurance that the individual has been arrested in connection with a registered offence.

Why confidentiality did not justify abandoning communication

The Court's adoption of the earlier reasoning also preserved the distinction between furnishing the grounds and delivering the agency's entire internal information record, whose separate treatment matters because a constitutional requirement to explain the basis of an arrest does not necessarily entitle the accused to every document or confidential detail which the investigator has acquired during the wider inquiry. In Pankaj Bansal the discussion distinguished the grounds of arrest from the Enforcement Case Information Report, whose supply was not treated as an automatic requirement merely because written grounds had to be given, making it inaccurate to turn the present Court's reliance upon that judgment into a direction that every internal record belonging to every investigative agency must be disclosed before arrest can occur.

The earlier reasoning contemplated appropriate treatment of sensitive information by redaction where disclosure would prejudice the investigation, whose recognition enabled protection of legitimate confidentiality without allowing the agency to withhold the necessary grounds altogether, so that an asserted investigative concern had to be accommodated within the obligation rather than used to erase it. That distinction supplies an important qualification to the written requirement because the information needed to challenge custody is the personal basis upon which the arrest has been made, whose communication can remain meaningful even when material serving a different investigative purpose requires protection, provided confidentiality does not become a means of reducing the account to the generic reasons which the Court found insufficient in this case. The judgment therefore did not resolve the appeal through a choice between unrestricted disclosure and complete secrecy, since its reasoning concerned the accused's effective knowledge of the grounds while retaining the distinction between those grounds and the wider material held by the agency, whose preservation prevents the constitutional safeguard from being overstated as an unlimited right to obtain the complete investigation file.

Why judicial production was not a substitute for the protected information

The presence of a judicial authority in the remand process did not remove the agency's obligation to communicate the grounds, because judicial production and informed opposition perform connected but distinct functions, whose combination is necessary if the accused is to challenge the proposed custody through the legal assistance which Article 22 protects rather than merely be brought physically before a judge. The Court's examination of the actual production consequently looked beyond whether a remand order existed to whether the appellant had the information and opportunity which should have accompanied the proceeding, whose absence could not be answered by pointing to the judge's signature when the record demonstrated that the relevant application reached the chosen representative only after that signature had authorised custody.

Nor could the mere availability of a person described as providing legal assistance establish that the constitutional opportunity had been respected, since the appellant had already selected a representative whom the officer could contact while objecting to the substituted appearance, whose treatment in the judgment shows why the right of choice mattered within this particular record rather than as an abstract statement disconnected from the remand events. The Court did not have to determine every possible circumstance in which substitute assistance might be arranged, because the actual facts showed an existing choice and an available means of communication which had not been used before the hurried production, whose significance made a broader pronouncement unnecessary while supplying a concrete reason for rejecting the adequacy of the process followed here. The remand order thus remained subject to examination through the constitutional conditions which preceded it, whose breach could not be converted into compliance by the order itself because the judicial act was precisely the occasion at which timely information and assistance should have enabled the accused to resist the requested restraint.

Why the later additions to the order did not cure the sequence

The Court examined the remand order's reference to communication with the chosen legal representative and observed that the relevant lines appeared in a finer script than the rest of the order, whose placement and appearance supported its conclusion that the references had been inserted subsequently rather than proving that the representative had participated before custody was authorised. Its analysis expressly allowed the possibility that the remand judge had heard the representative after signing and added the lines without intending harm, which kept the decision from making an unnecessary accusation of personal misconduct against the judicial officer while maintaining the decisive fact that an opportunity provided after the recorded order could not perform the function of a hearing before it.

The qualification mattered because a defect in the timing of a protected opportunity does not require a finding of malicious intention by every person involved, whose motives can remain distinct from the objective sequence through which the accused lost the ability to oppose remand before the decision was made, making the Court's conclusion procedural and constitutional rather than dependent upon attributing an improper purpose to the remand judge. An entry recording that a representative had been heard could therefore not answer the challenge by itself, since the Court had to consider when that event occurred in relation to the order, whose later supplementation could describe an eventual conversation without changing the earlier moment at which the application had already been granted. The Court treated that subsequent hearing as ineffective for the purpose under examination, because participation after the decision cannot establish that the accused had the knowledge and assistance required to resist the proposed custody, whose absence remained material notwithstanding the later inclusion of a record suggesting that communication had eventually taken place.

Why the Court did not decide whether the accusations were substantiated

The appellant challenged the substance of the allegations and the relationship between the activities described in the FIR and the offences invoked, but the Court declined to adjudicate those matters because doing so would require an examination of the merits which was unnecessary to determine whether the arrest and initial remand had followed the constitutionally required process. That boundary kept the holding tied to the legal defect actually established, whose consequence for custody did not require the Court to pronounce upon the alleged preparation of a map, participation in public agitation or other factual matters advanced in the contest over the prosecution's case, making their rejection or acceptance inappropriate within an appeal resolved upon the failure to communicate the grounds in time.

The Court similarly refrained from a detailed evaluation of whether the remand application's account was intelligible enough to constitute adequate grounds, because a conclusion about the substance of that account could prejudice later adjudication while the admitted chronology already demonstrated that the document had not been provided before the relevant order. Its brief observation that the communicated material largely narrated matters drawn from the FIR did not become a final ruling that the prosecution had no case, since the Court recognised the investigative purpose of the FIR and left the substantive accusation for the court examining the matter after the charge sheet, whose proper role could be preserved while the present constitutional challenge was determined independently. The distinction prevents the release direction from being understood as an acquittal or a finding that every allegation had been fabricated, because the Court expressly resolved the lawfulness of the custodial process without deciding the truth of the accusation, whose eventual adjudication remained separate from the immediate remedy for the infringement of the appellant's rights.

Why the timing of the Pankaj Bansal judgment did not exclude its application

The State relied upon the prospective treatment of Pankaj Bansal discussed in Ram Kishor Arora, but the Court found that the remand under challenge occurred on the day after the earlier judgment had been delivered, whose chronology defeated the suggestion that a later communication requirement could not govern the particular proceeding in which custody had been authorised. The contention that the earlier judgment might have been uploaded late did not supply a factual or legal answer, because the Court treated that suggestion as conjectural while the date of pronouncement and the later date of remand were established, whose relationship made the attempt to exclude the earlier reasoning from this case unpersuasive.

The Court further explained that an interpretation of a statutory provision within the constitutional scheme becomes binding under Article 141 when declared by the Supreme Court, whose status as law applicable to courts throughout the country could not be made dependent upon an unsupported account of when an online copy was available to a particular investigator or participant. That reasoning should be retained within the procedural sequence examined in the judgment rather than presented as a separate ruling upon every possible retrospective dispute, because the case concerned a remand which followed the relevant pronouncement while the Court also relied upon the established constitutional understanding of communicated grounds, whose protection did not originate merely from the convenience of publishing a document online. The reference to the earlier decision accordingly answered the argument raised about this arrest and remand without requiring the Court to review every instance of custody preceding the pronouncement, whose treatment would involve its own facts and applicable reasoning rather than an inference drawn from a chronology which the Court had no need to decide in this appeal.

Why a charge sheet could not make the original custody lawful

The Court held that filing the charge sheet did not validate the illegality and unconstitutionality committed when the appellant was arrested and initially remanded, because a later stage in the prosecution cannot retrospectively create the information and opportunity which were missing at the point when the State deprived the individual of liberty through the challenged process. The progress of investigation may alter the material placed before the trial court but does not change whether the accused had received the written grounds before the initial custodial decision, whose validity therefore remained open to examination notwithstanding the agency's completion of its report and the continued existence of the underlying criminal case.

This reasoning preserved the difference between a prosecution capable of proceeding upon its substantive allegations and a particular deprivation of liberty rendered unlawful through noncompliance, since the Court did not terminate the criminal accusation merely because the arrest failed while refusing equally to treat the survival of the accusation as a reason to overlook that failure. A later procedural development consequently could not be used as an answer to an earlier constitutional breach without examining the breach itself, whose significance concerned the lawful basis of custody rather than the eventual quantity of evidence collected, making the release remedy compatible with the continuing jurisdiction of the trial court over the prosecution.

Why the remedy addressed custody without deciding the trial

Having found that the remand application was not communicated to the appellant or his chosen legal representative before the relevant order, the Court concluded that the arrest and subsequent remand were vitiated, whose invalidity required the arrest, the initial remand order and the High Court's refusal to interfere to be set aside instead of allowing the breach to remain without an effective consequence. The relief followed the constitutional and statutory failure established in the record, which enabled the Court to direct release without requiring a separate determination that the accused had disproved the offences or satisfied the ordinary merits of a bail claim, whose examination would have diverted the appeal into the substantive questions deliberately left open.

The Court considered that release without bonds or security would have followed the invalid arrest, yet took account of the filed charge sheet in directing release upon furnishing bail and bonds to the satisfaction of the trial court, whose inclusion in the operative remedy acknowledged the procedural stage reached without treating that later stage as a cure for the unlawful deprivation already identified. The direction therefore combined an effective response to the infringement with the continuing authority of the court dealing with the prosecution, because the appellant's release from the custody challenged did not bring the accusation itself to an end, whose adjudication remained available through the ordinary process without influence from comments which the Supreme Court expressly confined to the question of arrest and remand.

The Court's express reservation that its observations should not be treated as comments upon the merits confirms that boundary, whose preservation is necessary when reading strong criticism of the custodial process because a finding that fundamental rights were infringed does not itself determine whether the evidence ultimately establishes an offence. Prabir Purkayastha accordingly explains why the right to know the grounds has to operate before the custodial process which it enables the accused to contest, whose practical content requires a personal and usable written account together with a meaningful opportunity for legal assistance rather than a generic arrest form, an eventual message or a later charge sheet offered as substitutes for the protection which the Constitution requires at the relevant time.

Source: Prabir Purkayastha v. State (NCT of Delhi) · 2024 INSC 414 · [2024] 6 SCR 666