Policemen should not arrest the accused as a matter of course in every other criminal case including those arising out of matrimonial disputes and judicial magistrates should not remand, “in a mechanical manner,” all those who are arrested and produced before them, the Madras High Court Bench here has observed.
Disposing of a petition, Justice C.T. Selvam cited a latest judgement of the Supreme Court which had said: “The power of arrest is one of the lucrative sources of police corruption. The attitude to arrest first and then proceed with the rest is despicable. It has become a handy tool to the police officers who lack sensitivity or act with oblique motive.”
The apex court had also said that the fact that Section 498A (husband or relative of a husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was a cognizable and non-bailable offence had lent it a dubious place of pride among the legal provisions that were used as weapons rather than as shields by disgruntled wives.
“The simplest way to harass was to get the husband and his relatives arrested under this provision. In quite a number of cases, bed-ridden grand-fathers and grand-mothers of the husbands, their sisters living abroad for decades are arrested,” it said and referred to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics to substantiate the conclusion.
