Supreme Court holds that the 24-hour period to produce a person before a magistrate starts at detention, not at formal arrest

5 November 2026

The Supreme Court held on 5 November 2026 that the twenty-four hour period within which a person taken into custody must be produced before a magistrate begins from the moment of detention and not from the time the police record a formal arrest. The ruling came in Sujit Das v. Union of India. The Court's reasoning closes a gap that let the clock start late when a person was held for questioning first and arrested on paper afterwards. The constitutional protection involved is Article 22(2) of the Constitution, which requires an arrested person to be produced before the nearest magistrate within twenty-four hours, excluding travel time. The same safeguard appears in Section 58 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which bars unreasonable detention even within the twenty-four hours. The Bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S. Chandurkar held that the Constitution does not recognise any detention divorced from arrest, and that a magistrate must record the actual date and time of detention. The judgment is reported as 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 1137.