The Madras High Court Bench here has disapproved of the police practice of informing relatives or friends of the arrest of an individual on the phone and making an endorsement to that effect in the arrest memo.
Disposing of a contempt of court application, Justice N. Kirubakaran said that passing on information on the phone was not desirable since it became difficult to prove whether or not the relatives or friends were informed.
The judge agreed with R. Gandhi, counsel for the applicant, that since the Centre had discontinued telegraph service since July 15 last year, the best option available to the police was to use e-post being offered by the Department of Posts. He expressed displeasure with police officers using phones to intimate the family of those arrested in criminal cases despite a ban imposed on the practice by a Division Bench in the Principal Seat of the High Court on August 29 last.
In the present case, the applicant, K.S. Anwar alias Syed Anwar, claimed that a Sub-Inspector, attached to the Central Crime Branch here, did not follow any of the 11 directions issued by the Supreme Court in D.K. Basu’s case in 1997 while arresting him on June 25.
One of the directions states that police officers should prepare a memo of arrest containing the date and time of arrest and get it attested by at least one witness, who may either be a family member of the arrested or a respectable person of the locality where the arrest is made. The other directions state that the police should notify, as soon as practicable, the next friend or relative of the arrested of the time and place of arrest and the venue of custody through telegraph, besides sensitising the arrested to his right to have someone informed.
However, in the arrest memo pertaining to the applicant, the Sub-Inspector had just mentioned a phone number and recorded that the applicant’s wife had been informed of the arrest on that number. Such a practice could not be entertained, the judge said.
