Suspects in heinous crimes cannot avoid police custody anymore by surrendering before judicial magistrates in far away districts. Similarly, notorious criminals cannot follow the modus operandi of making unconnected individuals surrender before such magistrates to divert the investigation, thanks to the Madras High Court.
The High Court on Friday ordered that henceforth all judicial magistrates in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry should not remand in judicial custody persons who surrender voluntarily in connection with criminal cases investigated at police stations located outside the territorial jurisdiction of those magistrates.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh held such practice, in vogue for decades together, as illegal. He said, the magistrates could invoke their power to remand under Section 167(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure only when the suspects are produced by the police and not when they surrender voluntarily.
“In the event an accused voluntarily appears before a Magistrate having no jurisdiction to try the case, it would be open to the Magistrate to direct the Station House Officer of the nearest police station under his jurisdiction to take the accused into custody and deal with him in accordance with the Police Standing Orders,” he said.
The Police Standing Orders empower such Station House Officer to arrest the suspect, if the offence was of a serious nature and there was an apprehension of him absconding, and produce him before the jurisdictional magistrate with due intimation to the police station where the investigation was pending.
The judge made it clear that the directions issued by him to the magistrates, with respect to voluntary surrender, would apply only to cases booked under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and not under special laws such as the Customs Act, 1962 and Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 since those procedures were different.
Ordering the judicial magistrates in the State and the Union Territory to follow his directions scrupulously, Justice Venkatesh directed the High Court’s Registrar General to place his order before Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and circulate it to all the judicial officers after due approval.
The judge dealt with the entire issue at the instance of State Public Prosecutor (SPP) Hasan Mohamed Jinnah who represented Tambaram Police Commissionerate and highlighted how effective investigation in heinous crimes was being thwarted by resorting to the practice of surrendering before unconnected magistrates.
The SPP said, the Otteri police under Tambaram Commissionerate had registered a case on February 29 in connection with the murder of DMK functionary and Kattankulathur Panchayat Union deputy chairman V.S. Aramudhan in Chengalpattu district by chopping off his limbs after hurling a countrymade bomb.
The complainant, a relative of the deceased, had stated that six henchmen had committed the crime and that he would be able to identify them. Even as the police were trying to nab them, some five individuals, including a juvenile, had surrendered before the Sathyamangalam Magistrate in Erode district on March 1.
The Magistrate too had remanded four of the adults in judicial custody without intimation to the investigating officer who came to know of such remand only through newspaper reports, the SPP said. He pointed out four more individuals appeared to have surrendered in connection with the same case in Virudhunagar district.
Stating this was a common practice adopted by criminals in most cases, Mr. Jinnah requested the court to lay down certain guidelines and prevent the practice of judicial magistrates accepting surrender of suspects wanted by the police outside the jurisdiction of those judicial officers.
Though Madras High Court Advocates Association (MHAA) president G. Mohanakrishnan requested the court to not disturb the practice in vogue for several decades, the judge rejected the plea.
“This strange and dubious practice of doubtful or non-existent legal ancestry is found only in this State and Puducherry and is perhaps unknown to the rest of this country. There is no iota of doubt that this specious practice has grown up only for the purposes of countering arrest and custody of the police by obtaining a remand before the Magistrate,” the judge wrote.
