Even if any information disclosing a cognizable offence is laid before O/C of Police Station, an arrest is not a must: The National Police Commission in its third report has suggested that, by and large, nearly 60% of the arrests by police were either unnecessary or unjustified and that such unjustified police action accounted for 43.2% of the expenditure in jails. Hence, the quality of a nation’s civilization can be largely measured by the methods it uses in the enforcement of criminal law. The Report at Pg.32 also suggested that an arrest during the investigation of a cognizable case may be considered justified in one or other of the following circumstances: • The case involves a grave offence like murder, dacoity, robbery, rape etc., and it is necessary to arrest the accused and bring his movements under restraint to infuse confidence among the terror striken victims. • The accused is likely to abscond and evade the process of law. • The accused is given to violent behavior and is likely to commit further offences unless his movements are brought under restraint. • The accused is a habitual offender and unless kept in custody he is likely to commit similar offences again. Thus, a person is not liable to arrest merely on the suspicion of complicity in an offence. There must be some reasonable justification in the opinion of the officer effecting the arrest that such arrest is necessary and justified. Except in heinous offences, an arrest must be avoided if a police officer issues notice to person to attend the station house and not to leave the station without permission would do. There is no doubt that now-a-days often false and frivolous first information reports are lodged against even respectable persons of society, and if such respectable persons have to be arrested on the basis of such false and frivolous FIRs/ complaints it will certainly result in incalculable harm to their reputation and self-respect. If a criminal trials often take five years or sometimes even more to complete, and hence the question arises is that if an accused is found innocent after this long interval who will restore this five years or so of life to him if he is not granted bail? Arrest and detention in police lock up of a person can cause incalculable harm to the reputation and self-esteem of a person. It may be mentioned that a person’s reputation and esteem in society is a valuable asset, just as in civil law it is an established principle that good will of a firm is an intangible asset. And often false and frivolous FIRs are filed yet the innocent person has to go to jail, and this greatly damages his reputation in society. By Apex court in - Jitendra sing and others v/s State of UP and another decided on 4th Feb.,2010 vide Bail application u/s 482 CrPC vide No. 3559 of 2010 with ref. to Joginder Kumar v/s State of UP, 1994 CrLJ, 1981 and, Amarwati and Anr(Smt) v/s state of U.P on 15th Oct, 2004. “For a self respect man, death is preferable to dishonour”. - Gita 2:34
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 01:29:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015