- The very mention of the police immediately triggers several images of authority, arrogance, condescension, aggressiveness, and fear, a gamut of emotions where none of the reassuring ones, like empathy, kindness, service, and understanding, are present. Mind you, the police are meant to serve the people with the utmost sincerity, honesty, and integrity, without prejudice, as mandated by the Constitution. The police are tasked with the onerous responsibility of ensuring law and order in society by leaving no stone unturned to ensure that anti-social elements do not get away with it. However, the bane of the country over the decades has been the police-political masters’ unholy nexus, harming the very fabric of society.
PC: The Leaflet
- Thus, the calls to usher in much-needed police reforms to address these glaring anomalies have fallen on deaf ears, with the political leadership not pressing ahead with the same despite the Supreme Court time and again nudging them. The latest advice from the SC to the police also makes immense sense. The SC has recently asked the police to think before acting. Ask, it said in as many words, why arrest before making the arrest: “The police officer shall ask himself the question as to whether an arrest is a necessity or not, before undertaking said exercise.” It should be obvious, right? Just because the law allows police powers to arrest in no way means random arrests can be made on vague pretexts, such as questioning.
PC: Legal Wires
- Police powers of arrest, SC said, are “mere statutory discretion”, “not a matter of routine but an exception”, “shall not be undertaken unless absolutely warranted”, “power of arrest to be exercised rather sparingly”. The moot point to ask here is, do the police not know this? Of course, they do. Do police procedure training not stay updated? Maybe. Do cops misinterpret their powers as laid down in law? Unlikely. Why have unwarranted arrests, even if the law allows forit, as a widely practiced norm? The more probable answer is institutional culture. Police make unnecessary arrests because the culture across police forces has become to punish, making process the punishment, riding roughshod over both the constitutional rights of those facing arrest and with zero sensibilities to how damaging an arrest can be.
PC: India Lawyers
- The ruling builds on an earlier order from Nov 2025, when SC held, in a case where appellants argued they weren’t informed of grounds of arrest in writing, that regardless of which law is in application, it is a constitutional mandate to inform the “arrestee of the grounds of arrest” in writing and in a language. SC made this mandatory in all offences under all statutes. The arrest would be illegal if there was non-compliance, and the person would be set free. Now, SC is telling cops to first justify in their own mind if an arrest is at all necessitated. Are cops listening? Forget about the cops, how about the political masters finally providing thrust to the much-delayed police reforms to make the law-and-order machinery more people-friendly? It’s time for the push.
