Procedure In Criminal Procedure

BAIL BY POLICE The criminal procedure systems of the world use three main methods of regulating events before trial. At one extreme, the pre-trial stage is left entirely in the hands of the police, as in our system. At the other extreme, as in the French, Belgian and German systems, the pre-trial stage is subject to the control and guidance of a magistrate. A third solution is that adopted in Scotland, where a public prosecutor has charge of the police investigation and of the actual prosecution, the judicial officer merely rubber-stamping the decision to send the accused for trial . The principal problems arising in that part of the criminal process which governs events before trial relate to the nature of police powers and procedure in the investigation of offences. The Code of Criminal Procedure 1973 confers wide powers upon our police of making arrests. In addition to the power of arrest, the code bestows upon the police powers parallel to the magistrate to release and arrest person on bail.

I. When Police may arrest

—The term ‘arrest’ is not defined either in the Code or in the various substantive Acts. The word ‘arrest’, when used in its ordinary and natural sense, means the apprehension or restraint or the deprivation of one’s personal liberty. When used in the legal sense, in the procedure connected with criminal offence, an arrest consists in the taking into custody of another person, under authority empowered by law, for the purpose of holding or detaining him to answer a criminal charge or of preventing the commission of a criminal offence. The essential elements required to institute an arrest, in the above sense, are that there must be an intent to arrest under the authority, accompanied by a seizure or detention of the person, in the manner known to law, which is so understood by the person arrested. In every arrest there is custody but not vice versa—and both the words ‘custody’ and ‘arrest’ are not synonymous