Supreme Court rules 24‑hour custody clock starts at moment liberty is restricted

The Supreme Court held that the mandatory 24‑hour period for presenting a detained person before a magistrate starts from the moment the individual’s liberty is curtailed, not from the formal recording of an arrest.

A bench led by Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and A.S. Chandurkar dismissed the notion of a separate ‘buffer’ period, stating that any distinction between detention and arrest is unconstitutional.

The judgment arose from appeals by four people arrested under the NDPS Act after a seizure of 11.03 kg of yaba tablets in Tripura; they were detained on September 29, 2025, but formally shown as arrested the next morning, exceeding the 24‑hour limit.

The court emphasized that the constitutional protection under Article 22(2) applies uniformly, overriding any special‑law provisions that restrict bail, and that failure to produce the detainee within the stipulated time requires immediate release.

The decision also repudiated earlier high‑court rulings that allowed a pre‑arrest detention period to be excluded from the 24‑hour calculation, reinforcing the primacy of fundamental rights over statutory interpretations.