Difference Between Judicial Custody And Police Remand
Judicial Custody And Police Remand: Whenever someone commits a crime, he or she is arrested. The mistake that most people make is they consider arrest and custody to be synonymous. However, both are different and have separate meanings. For a layperson, it is not possible to have legal knowledge or to know the clauses of Indian law. In that case, read this blog to know about judicial custody and police remand.
What is an arrest?
Whenever a person violates the law of the country, he is arrested. In the true sense of the term, arrest means the confinement of a person by the legal authorities to deprive liberty. Further, an arrest can also be said to be the forceful restraint or seizure of a person committing an offence. Finally, under criminal law, an arrest is a decisive move to bring a criminal or offender before the court or prevent absconding.
How different is judicial custody from police remand?
To understand the difference between judicial custody and police remand, you have to have a clear idea about the following:
- What is custody?
Custody means seizing someone for protection. Whenever there is a life risk of an offender, or if the higher authority suspects that the offender may escape or tamper with the evidence, he or she is taken into custody. After someone is being charged with a criminal offence or convicted of committing a crime, a person is taken into custody.
Custody can be divided into two types:
- Judicial custody
- Police custody
Let’s take a look at each one of them individual
What is judicial custody?
When police deal with a severe case, the court may go along with the request of the police to detain the accused even after the expiry of the tenure of police custody. This is done only to keep the evidence and witness safe. This is the actual judicial custody meaning. According to Indian law, a charge sheet needs to be filed for a criminal case within 90 days. If the charge sheet is not filed, the court may grant bail to the accused.
However, suppose the offender has committed any heinous crime like murder or rape. In that case, the accused is kept in judicial custody for a more extended period, even after the expiration of the tenure, so that the offender cannot influence the trial process. If you want to know how long a person can be kept in judicialcustody, the answer is 60 days. However, this period depends on the intensity of the crime committed.
- What is police custody?
In the legal sphere, police custody means when a person is arrested, he must be produced to the magistrate within 24 hours of his arrest. None can detain a person for more than 24 hours without proper approval or order from the court or magistrate.
- What is a police remand?
Many of you may get confused between police custody and police remand. However, there is a slight difference between police custody and police remand. The meaning of police custody has been explained above. The word ‘remand’ means to send back or return. But according to Indian law, ‘remand’ has two different meanings:
- It means to send back the accused to the custody of the concerned authority.
- It further means sending back a case from the appellate court to the judicial court.
In section 57 of the CrPC discusses that no police officer can detain a person who has been arrested for more than 24 hours. Even if the officer detains an accused beyond 24 hours, he needs special permission from the concerned magistrate. This special permission under section 57 is known as police remand or pre-trial detention.
How long can a person be detained without remand?
According to section 57 of CrPC, the police has no right to detain anybody for more than 24 hours. These 24 hours does not include the time required for transportation of the accused from the place of arrest to the magistrate. The accused must be brought before a magistrate after 24 hours because of the following reasons:
- To stop police stations from being used for prisons
- To prevent detention and arrest to extract confessions from the accused or as a method of gathering information from them
Another vital point to be noted is that police remand can only be asked by either the officer in charge of the police station or by an investing officer, provided he is not below the rank of a sub-inspector. If the investigation cannot be completed within 24 hours of the arrest, the accused should be preceded by a judicial magistrate soon. From time to time, the magistrate needs to authorize the detention of the accused of not more than 15 days.
Conclusion
From all the discussions mentioned above, it can be concluded that the provisions produced by the Indian law are all for the favour of the accused. The sections intend to protect the accused from any unscrupulous officer.