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‘Cong leader Indi arrested hour before FIR’: Court raps Ludhiana police
While hearing the police application seeking custodial remand, the court recorded that Indi was picked up from his residence around 9.15 am on December 20
In a stinging order that has put the Ludhiana police on the defensive, a local court has held the arrest of Congress leader Inderjit Singh, alias Indi, illegal, citing serious procedural lapses that, it said, strike at the very root of the prosecution’s case. Indi, a close associate of former cabinet minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu and husband of Congress councillor Parminder Kaur from Ward No. 61, was arrested by the Division Number 8 police on December 20 on charges of attempt to murder and obstructing a civic body employee from performing official duty.
While hearing the police application seeking custodial remand, the court recorded that Indi was picked up from his residence around 9.15 am on December 20, even though the FIR in the case was registered later at 10.08 am. The court further noted that Indi was produced before the court for remand only at 1 pm on December 21, well beyond the mandatory 24-hour period, and that no notice under Section 35 of the BNS was served. Taking note of these violations, the court declared the arrest illegal and ordered Indi’s release.
The court observed that this sequence raised grave doubts about the legality of the arrest and suggested that the accused may have been detained even before a criminal case formally came into existence.
The FIR was registered against Indi on the complaint of the joint commissioner (A) of the Ludhiana municipal corporation under Sections 109, 132, 218, 221, 222, 224, 351(3) and 62 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. According to the complaint, Rose Garden circle in-charge Ajay Kumar was allegedly attacked while on duty, leading to the registration of the case.
The court further flagged another troubling aspect of the police action relating to Indi’s production before the judiciary. After being produced before a duty magistrate, Indi was taken to a different court nearly two hours later. During this interregnum, the police failed to offer any satisfactory explanation regarding where the accused was kept or under whose authority he remained. The court remarked that this unexplained gap seriously undermined the credibility of the prosecution and cast a shadow over the fairness of the arrest process.
In its detailed order, the court reiterated that informing an arrestee of the grounds of arrest is not a mere formality but a mandatory constitutional safeguard under Article 22(1), flowing from the right to personal liberty guaranteed under Article 21. It noted that the police failed to furnish written grounds of arrest to Indi or his family members, as mandated by recent Supreme Court rulings. The absence of any acknowledgment or contemporaneous record showing compliance weighed heavily against the prosecution.
The court also held that the police had failed to follow the binding guidelines laid down in the landmark Arnesh Kumar judgment, which mandate that in offences punishable with imprisonment of less than seven years, arrest should be an exception and not the rule.
The investigating officer did not record any reasons explaining why notice under Section 35 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, earlier Section 41-A of the CrPC, was not issued prior to arrest. No material was placed on record to show that Indi was a flight risk, likely to tamper with evidence, or required custodial interrogation for effective investigation.
Taking a serious view of the cumulative lapses, the court concluded that the arrest violated constitutional safeguards and Supreme Court directions. Consequently, the application seeking police remand was dismissed and directions were issued for the immediate release of the accused from custody.
