Criminal Investigation: FIR, Arrest and Custody (UGC-NET Unit V)

A case can begin in one of two ways, and the choice is not left to convenience. Where information discloses a cognizable offence, the officer in charge of a police station must record it as an FIR, and the police can then investigate and arrest without waiting for a magistrate's permission.

Where the offence is non-cognizable, or a complainant wants to bypass the police, the route is a private complaint to a magistrate, who can order an inquiry, direct a police investigation, or in narrow circumstances take the matter up directly.

For NET purposes, the mandatory-registration rule is the single most tested point here. The Supreme Court held in Lalita Kumari v. Government of Uttar Pradesh (2014) that registering an FIR for a cognizable offence is compulsory, and the police cannot run a preliminary inquiry first, except in a narrow list of situations such as matrimonial disputes, commercial disputes, medical negligence or corruption cases.

A related fixture is the zero FIR, which lets any police station register a case regardless of where the offence occurred, so a victim is never turned away at the wrong station. If registration is refused, a complainant can approach a superior officer or a magistrate.

Arrest restricts liberty directly, so the power is bounded from both directions. A warrant is a written order from a magistrate, used mainly for less urgent cases or where a person has failed to appear on a summons. Most arrests in ordinary investigation happen without a warrant, because the offence is cognizable and urgent action is needed.

An officer must have reasonable grounds to believe a cognizable offence has been committed, or that arrest is necessary to stop the offence continuing, to investigate properly, or to prevent tampering with evidence or witnesses. A distinct protection applies to less serious offences carrying a shorter maximum sentence, where the threshold for arresting without a warrant is higher.

Having the legal grounds to arrest is not the same as it being necessary to do so. Courts have repeatedly stressed that arrest should be the exception, not the routine first step, particularly for less serious offences where a notice of appearance can achieve the same investigative purpose without custody.

Comparable frameworks exist elsewhere in different form: the United States requires probable cause under the Fourth Amendment, and England and Wales require an officer to have reasonable grounds for suspicion and reasonable grounds for believing arrest is necessary, not merely convenient.

Because arrest happens quickly, its safeguards focus on transparency rather than rearguing whether the arrest was justified. Article 22(1) of the Constitution of India requires that an arrested person be told, as soon as possible, the grounds for arrest, and gives the right to consult and be defended by a legal practitioner of choice.

The Supreme Court gave this operational force in D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal (1997), directing that the arresting officer prepare a memo of arrest at the time of arrest, attested by a witness and countersigned by the person arrested, with a copy handed to them.

These directions exist because the period right after arrest, before any court knows a person is in custody, is where abuse has historically occurred; a signed, witnessed memo makes that period traceable. Comparable protections exist elsewhere: England and Wales open a custody record on arrival at the station, and the United States requires the Miranda warning on the right to remain silent and to an attorney before custodial questioning.

Police custody lets investigators question a suspect while the trail is fresh, but because it places a person under direct police control, the law caps how long it can last. An arrested person must be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours of arrest, excluding travel time.

Beyond that first 24 hours, any further detention, police or judicial, needs a magistrate's authorisation, and total police custody within the early investigation window is capped well below the outer 60 or 90 day period for filing the final report, after which the accused becomes entitled to what is often called default or statutory bail.

The time limit is a structural check, not a formality: early judicial oversight, mandatory medical examination on production, and magistrate-only authorisation for any extension all reduce the room for the abuse the D.K. Basu directions were meant to prevent. Other systems run a similar logic on a shorter clock.

Under England and Wales's framework a suspect can normally be held up to 24 hours before charge or release, extendable to 36 and then 96 hours with authorisation. In the United States, the Supreme Court held in County of Riverside v. McLaughlin (1991) that a warrantless arrest generally requires a judicial determination of probable cause without unreasonable delay.