CAN AN ILLEGAL ARREST BE CURED BY SUBSEQUENT JUDICIAL ORDERS?

CAN AN ILLEGAL ARREST BE CURED BY SUBSEQUENT JUDICIAL ORDERS?

A Critical Analysis of the Allahabad High Court’s Decision in Neeraj v. State of U.P. in Light of Articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution of India

By – Alok Kumar

Editor- Kanishk Kr Singh & Adv. Komal

ABSTRACT

The Allahabad High Court’s recent decision in Neeraj and Another v. State of U.P. and Another (2026 LiveLaw (AB) 305) raises a set of questions that strike at the very heart of India’s constitutional jurisprudence on personal liberty. The Division Bench, presided over by Justice Siddharth and Justice Vinai Kumar Dwivedi, dismissed a habeas corpus petition challenging an illegal arrest—not because the arrest was lawful, but because the petitioner moved the court more than two years after his arrest, by which time cognizance had been taken and trial proceedings under Section 309 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC) had commenced.

Controversially, the court declared the recent line of Supreme Court judgments—including Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India (2024) 7 SCC 576, Prabir Purkayastha v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2024) 8 SCC 254, Vihaan Kumar v. State of Haryana (2025 INSC 162), and Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra (2026) 1 SCC 500—as per incuriam and non-binding, on the ground that they failed to consider older Constitution Bench precedents.

This article critically examines whether an admittedly illegal arrest can be sanitized by subsequent judicial orders, scrutinizes the High Court’s per incuriam reasoning, and evaluates the broader constitutional implications of its holding for Articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution of India.

I. Introduction

Few questions in Indian criminal law have proven as persistently contested as the following: if a person is arrested in violation of the constitutional guarantees enshrined in Articles 21 and 22, can that constitutional defect be erased by the subsequent passage of a remand order, a charge-sheet, a cognizance order, or a committal?

The answer to this question has enormous practical consequences. It determines whether the machinery of post-arrest judicial oversight—intended to protect the accused—can instead be weaponized to launder an initially unlawful detention into a lawful one.

The Allahabad High Court’s judgment in Neeraj and Another v. State of U.P. and Another (“Neeraj”) answered this question in the affirmative, at least at the post-cognizance stage. The Court held that once a competent court takes cognizance on a charge-sheet, a challenge to the initial remand through habeas corpus becomes non-maintainable.

The petitioner—an accused facing trial for the alleged dowry death and murder of his wife and infant daughter—had approached the High Court under its writ jurisdiction more than two years after his arrest, asserting that the arresting officer had failed to communicate the grounds of arrest in writing, in violation of Article 22(1) of the Constitution and Section 50 of the CrPC. His regular bail application had already been rejected by the Sessions Court.

The Bench’s decision rested on two complementary pillars:

1. A procedural holding that habeas corpus does not lie once cognizance is taken; and
2. A substantive and highly controversial holding that the recent Supreme Court judgments mandating immediate release for non-communication of grounds of arrest are per incuriam and not binding on the High Court, having been decided without adverting to binding Constitution Bench precedents.

This article proceeds as follows. Part II sets out the factual background of Neeraj. Part III examines the constitutional and statutory framework governing arrest, remand, and habeas corpus. Part IV traces the evolution of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on grounds of arrest. Part V critically analyses the High Court’s twin holdings on maintainability and per incuriam. Part VI assesses the broader constitutional implications. Part VII concludes with recommendations.

II. Factual Background: Neeraj and Another v. State of U.P. and Another

The facts of Neeraj, as emerging from contemporaneous reports, are not extraordinary in themselves—they are, tragically, a pattern that recurs with troubling frequency in Indian criminal justice.

An FIR was registered at Police Station Kotwali Lalitpur against the petitioner for offences relating to the alleged dowry death and murder of his wife and minor daughter. He was arrested and produced before a Remand Magistrate, who remanded him to judicial custody without, according to the petitioner, any written communication of the grounds of arrest having been made to him as mandated by Article 22(1) of the Constitution and Section 50 of the CrPC.

Following investigation, a charge-sheet was filed. A competent court took cognizance of the charge-sheet, committed the case to the Court of Sessions, framed charges, and trial commenced.

The petitioner’s regular bail application was rejected by the Sessions Court.

It was only after this sequence of events—spanning more than two years—that the petitioner preferred a habeas corpus writ petition before the Allahabad High Court, contending that his arrest was void ab initio for want of written communication of grounds.

The State did not concede the illegality of the arrest. The Bench, however, proceeded on the assumption that the constitutional grievance was genuine, but held that the remedy of habeas corpus was no longer available at the post-cognizance, mid-trial stage.

III. The Constitutional and Statutory Framework

A. Article 21: The Right to Life and Personal Liberty

Article 21 of the Constitution of India declares that no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.

The Supreme Court, in a long arc of judgments stretching from Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India AIR 1978 SC 597 to D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal (1997) 1 SCC 416, has read this provision expansively.

The “procedure established by law” is not any procedure; it must be just, fair, and reasonable.

An arrest that violates constitutional mandates—whether through the failure to communicate grounds or through the failure to produce the accused before a magistrate within twenty-four hours—violates the procedure established by law and consequently violates Article 21.

The significance of Article 21 in the arrest context is therefore direct: it is not merely Article 22 that is engaged when an arrest is illegal.

A fortiori, every illegal arrest is also a violation of Article 21.

B. Article 22: Specific Safeguards Against Arrest and Detention

Article 22 provides a set of specific procedural guarantees that operate as a textual supplement to the broader guarantee of personal liberty in Article 21.

Article 22(1) provides that no person who is arrested shall be detained in custody without being informed, as soon as may be, of the grounds for such arrest, and that such person shall not be denied the right to consult and to be defended by a legal practitioner of his choice.

Article 22(2) mandates production before a magistrate within twenty-four hours.

The combined operation of Articles 21 and 22 creates a constitutional architecture designed to subject every arrest to immediate scrutiny and to ensure that the person arrested is never left ignorant of the basis for his deprivation of liberty.

Crucially, the phrase “as soon as may be” in Article 22(1) is not a license for delay.

The Supreme Court has consistently held—from Joginder Kumar v. State of U.P. (1994) 4 SCC 260 to the more recent judgments discussed below—that the communication of grounds must be prompt, specific, and in writing.

A reference to a case crime number or a generic statutory provision does not satisfy this constitutional mandate.

III. The Constitutional and Statutory Framework

C. Statutory Framework: CrPC/BNSS

Section 50 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (now Section 47 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS)) requires every police officer arresting any person without a warrant to forthwith communicate to the person the full particulars of the offence for which he is being arrested or the other grounds for such arrest.

Section 57 of the CrPC (Section 58 of the BNSS) requires production before a magistrate within twenty-four hours.

These provisions give statutory flesh to the skeletal constitutional guarantees of Article 22.

The writ of habeas corpus under Article 226 of the Constitution is the primary judicial remedy for illegal detention. It is available as a matter of right, not discretion, and is traditionally available at any stage of proceedings.

However, as the Court in Neeraj controversially held, a number of precedents suggest that the remedy is unavailable once a competent court takes cognizance.

IV. The Evolution of Supreme Court Jurisprudence on Grounds of Arrest

A. The Early Foundations: Joginder Kumar and D.K. Basu

The Supreme Court’s concern with arbitrary arrest is not new.

In Joginder Kumar v. State of U.P. (1994) 4 SCC 260, a bench of three judges emphatically held that no arrest can be made merely because it is lawful for the officer to do so.

The power of arrest is to be exercised in proportion to the gravity of the offence, and the arrested person must be informed of the grounds.

In D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal (1997) 1 SCC 416, the Court issued a comprehensive set of guidelines governing arrest, including the requirement of an arrest memo specifying the grounds of arrest, signed by an independent witness.

These early precedents established the principled foundation—but their enforcement in practice remained elusive.

B. The PMLA Line: Pankaj Bansal

A significant doctrinal turn occurred in Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India (2024) 7 SCC 576, a case arising under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.

The Court held that the right to be informed of the grounds of arrest under Section 19 of the PMLA, read with Article 22(1), is not satisfied by oral communication.

The grounds must be furnished in writing so that the person arrested has a documentary basis on which to seek legal counsel and challenge the arrest.

The Court specifically held that the failure to provide written grounds vitiates the arrest.

C. Universalising the Principle: Prabir Purkayastha

In Prabir Purkayastha v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2024) 8 SCC 254, the Court—in the context of an arrest under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA)—extended and universalised the Pankaj Bansal principle.

The Bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and Sandeep Mehta held that the right under Article 22(1) to written grounds of arrest applies without exception, regardless of the statute under which the arrest is made.

Significantly, the Court quashed the arrest and remand order, holding that the initial constitutional defect was not cured by subsequent proceedings.

D. Vihaan Kumar: The Constitutional Anchor

The most comprehensive restatement of the law on grounds of arrest came in Vihaan Kumar v. State of Haryana (2025 INSC 162), decided by a Bench of Justice Abhay S. Oka and Justice N. Kotiswar Singh.

The Court held, with unambiguous clarity, that the requirement of informing the person arrested of the grounds of arrest is a mandatory constitutional requirement flowing directly from Article 22 of the Constitution—not a mere statutory formality.

Failure to comply with this requirement amounts to a violation not only of Article 22(1) but also of the fundamental right to personal liberty under Article 21, because the procedure established by law under Article 21 necessarily includes the safeguards in Article 22(1).

Once an arrest is held vitiated, the Court held, the person cannot remain in custody even for a second.

Justice Singh’s concurring opinion elaborated that written communication is essential to ensure meaningful exercise of the right to consult legal counsel—an oral communication is easily disputed, leaves no documentary trail, and may not convey the specificity required to enable an effective challenge to the arrest.

E. Mihir Rajesh Shah: The Two-Hour Rule

The Supreme Court delivered another landmark judgment in Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra (2026) 1 SCC 500 (“Mihir Rajesh Shah”), arising from a high-profile hit-and-run case in Mumbai.

A Bench of Chief Justice B.R. Gavai and Justice Augustine George Masih crystallised and universalised the mandate to provide written grounds of arrest across all offences and all statutes—covering arrests for ordinary IPC/BNS offences as much as for PMLA or UAPA offences.

The Court additionally crafted a bright-line “two-hour rule”:

In all cases, written grounds of arrest must be furnished to the accused at least two hours before the remand hearing, so that the accused has a meaningful opportunity to oppose remand or seek bail.

The judgment acknowledged that exigent circumstances might sometimes make immediate written communication impractical—such as where an arrest is made in the midst of an ongoing crime—but held that even in such cases written grounds must be supplied within a reasonable time, and always before remand.

V. Critical Analysis of the Neeraj Judgment

A. The Maintainability Holding: Habeas Corpus Post-Cognizance

The first and less controversial of the two holdings in Neeraj is that habeas corpus is unavailable after cognizance is taken on the charge-sheet.

The Court located the absolute cut-off at the stage of cognizance: beyond this point, the remedy of habeas corpus becomes completely unavailable, and any Article 21 or 22(1) grievance must be pursued through the statutory remedy of bail or by challenging specific judicial orders through revision or appeal.

There is settled legal authority for the proposition that the habeas corpus writ does not lie to challenge a detention when the accused is held under a valid judicial order.

In cases where cognizance has been taken and the accused is remanded to judicial custody pending trial under Section 309 CrPC, the legality of detention is directly governed by the judicial order of the trial court—not by the initial arrest.

This principle is traceable to the Supreme Court’s observations in Kanu Sanyal v. District Magistrate, Darjeeling AIR 1974 SC 510, where the Court emphasised that the writ examines the legality of the current detaining order, not a prior and superseded order.

The Court in Neeraj further observed that allowing an accused to file a habeas corpus petition challenging the initial arrest after his bail application has been rejected by a coordinate court—or even by the Supreme Court—would amount to an impermissible collateral attack, effectively functioning as a lateral review of the prior bail order.

This reasoning has force.

There is a settled principle that once a court of competent jurisdiction has lawfully taken custody of an accused through a cognizance order, the basis of custody shifts from the police arrest to the judicial remand, and thereafter to the Section 309 CrPC order.

It would be anomalous to allow a petitioner to use the habeas corpus jurisdiction to re-agitate, in an indirect manner, grievances that could and should have been raised at the bail stage.

Importantly, the Court drew attention to the petitioner’s conduct: he had suppressed material dates and had not raised the Article 22(1) grievance at any stage of the bail proceedings.

Courts of equity do not come to the aid of those who sit on their rights, and the High Court applied this principle with justification.

The concern, however, is the absoluteness of the Court’s formulation.

The proposition that habeas corpus is completely unavailable after cognizance admits of no exception—not even for cases of grave and egregious constitutional violations.

This may go too far.

Consider a case where the police arrested a person without any legal authority whatsoever, without even a semblance of legal process, on a purely fabricated FIR, and thereafter procured a collusive remand from a corrupt magistrate.

Can it be said that habeas corpus is unavailable even in such a case, merely because a charge-sheet has subsequently been filed?

The absoluteness of the Neeraj formulation appears to foreclose this inquiry—a result that sits uneasily with the Supreme Court’s teaching in Maneka Gandhi that the courts must jealously guard fundamental rights.

B. The Per Incuriam Holding: A High Court Defying Binding Precedents

The second and far more controversial holding in Neeraj is the Court’s declaration that the recent Supreme Court judgments in Pankaj Bansal, Prabir Purkayastha, Vihaan Kumar, Kasireddy Upender Reddy, and Mihir Rajesh Shah are per incuriam and consequently non-binding on the High Court.

The doctrine of per incuriam—meaning “through want of care”—provides that a judgment is per incuriam if it was decided without adverting to a statutory provision or a binding precedent that, had it been considered, would have led to a different conclusion.

A High Court invoking per incuriam to decline to follow a Supreme Court decision is a step of extraordinary constitutional significance.

Article 141 of the Constitution declares that the law declared by the Supreme Court shall be binding on all courts within the territory of India.

This is not a matter of comity or deference; it is a constitutional command.

The Neeraj court invoked the per incuriam doctrine on the basis that the recent Supreme Court judgments mandating immediate release for non-communication of grounds of arrest failed to consider older, binding Constitution Bench judgments.

The Bench quoted approvingly the principle that a judgment delivered per incuriam is not binding and constitutes a departure from the rule of stare decisis.

This is an accurate statement of doctrine—but its application in the present case is deeply questionable for several reasons.

First, the per incuriam doctrine, when invoked by a High Court, must be applied with extraordinary restraint.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly cautioned that a High Court cannot lightly disregard its decisions on the ground that they are per incuriam.

In State of U.P. v. Ram Chandra Trivedi AIR 1976 SC 2547, the Supreme Court held that even if an earlier decision did not consider some statutory provision, it is the Supreme Court alone—not the High Court—that must decide whether that omission renders the decision per incuriam.

A High Court that disagrees with a Supreme Court ruling should express its disagreement and await clarification by the Supreme Court; it may not simply decline to follow the binding precedent.

Second, the High Court’s per incuriam holding is premised on a contestable reading of the relationship between the recent judgments and the older Constitution Bench decisions.

The Court suggested that the mandates in Pankaj Bansal, Prabir Purkayastha, Vihaan Kumar, and Mihir Rajesh Shah—particularly the proposition that non-communication of grounds of arrest vitiates the arrest and that no subsequent proceedings can cure the defect—are inconsistent with Constitution Bench authority.

But it is not evident which specific Constitution Bench judgments the recent decisions allegedly overlooked.

The High Court’s observation that the recent judgments have opened a “Pandora’s box” and created a “chaotic situation” is descriptive of the practical consequences of the precedents; it is not a legal ground for treating them as per incuriam.

Third, and most fundamentally, the High Court’s approach privileges procedural order over substantive constitutional rights.

The concern about a flood of habeas corpus petitions is a legitimate institutional worry—but the proper response is not to declare binding Supreme Court judgments non-binding.

The proper response is to impose time limits on the filing of habeas corpus petitions challenging illegal arrests, or to require that the constitutional grievance be raised at the earliest available opportunity.

These are calibrated, proportionate responses; the declaration of per incuriam is a blunt instrument that, if accepted, would permit High Courts across the country to insulate themselves from the discipline of Supreme Court precedent by invoking the same reasoning.

C. Can Subsequent Judicial Orders Cure an Illegal Arrest?

The central jurisprudential question—whether subsequent judicial orders cure an initially illegal arrest—admits of no doctrinally clean answer, and different courts have taken different positions at different times.

The Supreme Court in Prabir Purkayastha and Vihaan Kumar appears to have taken the view that the initial constitutional defect is incurable: the arrest being vitiated, the accused cannot remain in custody even for a second, and no subsequent remand or charge-sheet can sanitise the original violation.

This view rests on a principled constitutional foundation: if the procedure established by law under Article 21 includes Article 22(1), then an arrest that violates Article 22(1) is a deprivation of liberty that lacks the authority of law from the very moment of arrest.

The remediation of this defect requires the release of the accused—not merely an acknowledgment of the violation.

The opposing view—and the one adopted in Neeraj—holds that once a competent court has exercised jurisdiction over the accused by taking cognizance and has ordered his continued custody through a judicial remand, the basis of detention has shifted.

The accused is now in custody under a valid judicial order, not under the illegal arrest.

To say that the illegal arrest “vitiates” the subsequent judicial remand is to use an imprecise metaphor of contamination that has no clear stopping point.

It would imply that every judicial order made after an illegal arrest is itself void, which would have consequences for the charge-sheet, the cognizance order, the trial, and potentially even a conviction.

This tension is real and profound.

It reflects a deeper structural tension in constitutional law between the conception of rights as absolute, real-time entitlements (which admits of no cure for violations) and the conception of rights as procedural constraints on an otherwise continuing legal process (which permits subsequent proceedings to be governed by their own legality).

The Supreme Court’s recent judgments appear to take the former view; the Neeraj court took the latter.

There is, however, a middle path that the law appears to be groping toward.

The constitutional violation of non-communication of grounds of arrest entitles the accused to two things:

1. To challenge the arrest at the earliest available opportunity (such as by moving for bail and asserting the constitutional violation); and
2. To seek compensation for the violation even if subsequent proceedings have progressed.

This middle path—which has been adopted in several jurisdictions and is consistent with the Supreme Court’s observations in Rini Johar v. State of Madhya Pradesh (2016) 11 SCC 703—allows the constitutional violation to be acknowledged and remediated without necessarily rendering all subsequent proceedings void.

The Manoj Kumar v. State of U.P., Habeas Corpus Writ Petition No. 137 of 2026 decision of the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court, which awarded Rs. 10 lakh in compensation for non-communication of written grounds of arrest, exemplifies this approach.

VI. Broader Constitutional Implications

A. The Institutional Dimension: High Courts and Supreme Court Precedent

The most immediate institutional implication of Neeraj is its invitation to High Courts across the country to evaluate, and potentially disregard, Supreme Court precedents on grounds of per incuriam.

This is not a harmless innovation.

The constitutional authority of the Supreme Court as the apex court—and the guarantee of uniformity of the law that authority provides—depends critically on the compliance of the lower judiciary.

A regime in which each High Court independently assesses whether Supreme Court decisions are per incuriam would fragment the law and undermine the foundational constitutional principle of Article 141.

The Supreme Court itself has been emphatic on this point.

In Union of India v. Raghubir Singh (1989) 2 SCC 754, the Chief Justice of India speaking for the Constitution Bench held that it is not open to a High Court to ignore a Supreme Court judgment on the ground that it was rendered without considering some earlier authority.

If the High Court believes that a Supreme Court judgment is per incuriam, the appropriate course is to state its views and refer the matter; it cannot unilaterally refuse to follow the binding precedent.

B. The Liberty Dimension: A Chilling Effect on the Right to Challenge Illegal Arrests

The second implication concerns the practical access to constitutional remedies for individuals who are illegally arrested.

The Neeraj judgment, by declaring the recent Supreme Court precedents non-binding and by holding that habeas corpus is unavailable after cognizance, effectively signals to accused persons that the window for challenging an illegal arrest is narrow—perhaps confined to the period between arrest and cognizance.

If the accused is unable to move the court during that brief window—because, for instance, he is in police custody and lacks access to counsel—he loses his constitutional remedy permanently.

This chilling effect is compounded by the reality of the Indian criminal justice system, where the period between arrest and the filing of a charge-sheet can be lengthy, and where the communication of grounds of arrest to family members or lawyers is not always prompt.

The constitutional safeguards of Article 22 were designed precisely for situations like these—for the moment of vulnerability when the state’s coercive power is at its most acute and the individual’s access to legal protection is at its most limited.

C. The Remedy Gap: Between Habeas Corpus and Bail

The Neeraj court’s suggestion that post-cognizance constitutional grievances about the illegality of arrest must be agitated through the remedy of regular bail does not fully address the problem.

A bail court assesses the likelihood of bail in light of the gravity of the offence, the antecedents of the accused, and the risk of flight or tampering with evidence.

It does not—and structurally cannot—provide the same inquiry as the habeas corpus court, which focuses exclusively on the legality of the deprivation of liberty.

The two remedies serve different purposes and protect different interests.

A person whose bail is denied has not had the legality of his arrest judicially examined.

To substitute bail for habeas corpus is to leave a remedy gap in the constitutional architecture.

VII. Conclusion and Recommendations

The Allahabad High Court’s decision in Neeraj v. State of U.P. is both significant and troubling.

It is significant because it directly confronts the practical tensions created by the Supreme Court’s recent jurisprudence on grounds of arrest—tensions that, as the Court correctly observed, have led to a surge in belated habeas corpus petitions.

It is troubling because the Court’s chosen remedy—declaring binding Supreme Court precedents per incuriam—is constitutionally impermissible and threatens to unravel the rule of law that Article 141 was designed to secure.

The core constitutional question—whether an illegal arrest can be cured by subsequent judicial orders—remains unresolved.

The Supreme Court will inevitably be called upon to provide a definitive answer.

In this author’s submission, the answer must be calibrated rather than absolute.

An illegal arrest should not automatically vitiate all subsequent proceedings; that would lead to absurd and unjust consequences, including the release of persons who may pose a genuine danger to society.

At the same time, an illegal arrest should not simply be forgotten once cognizance is taken; the constitutional violation must be acknowledged, the accused must be given a meaningful opportunity to challenge the arrest at the appropriate stage, and compensation must be awarded where the violation is established.

Several specific recommendations follow from this analysis.

First, the Supreme Court should, at the earliest opportunity, authoritatively resolve the conflict between the Neeraj holding and its own recent precedents—either by confirming the per incuriam characterisation or by reiterating the binding nature of the Vihaan Kumar and Mihir Rajesh Shah line of cases.

Second, a clear time limit—perhaps the stage of cognizance—should be established for challenges to the legality of an arrest through habeas corpus, but with exceptions carved out for cases of gross illegality.

Third, the remedy of compensation for violations of Articles 21 and 22—as demonstrated in Manoj Kumar—should be developed as a parallel track to habeas corpus, providing meaningful redress without disrupting the progress of criminal trials.

Fourth, state governments, including the Government of Uttar Pradesh, should scrupulously implement the directives issued by the Supreme Court in Mihir Rajesh Shah regarding the written communication of grounds of arrest, so that the constitutional violation at the root of these disputes is prevented in the first instance.

The personal liberty of the individual stands at the summit of constitutional values.

Neeraj v. State of U.P. is a reminder that the machinery designed to protect that liberty—habeas corpus, written grounds of arrest, prompt production before a magistrate—requires not only judicial vigilance but also doctrinal coherence.

Both appear, at this moment, to be in short supply.

REFERENCES

I. CASES

1. Neeraj and Another v. State of U.P. and Another, 2026 LiveLaw (AB) 305 (Allahabad H.C.).
2. Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India, (2024) 7 SCC 576 (India).
3. Prabir Purkayastha v. State (NCT of Delhi), (2024) 8 SCC 254, 2024 INSC 414 (India).
4. Vihaan Kumar v. State of Haryana, 2025 INSC 162 (India).
5. Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra, (2026) 1 SCC 500, 2025 INSC 1288 (India).
6. Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, AIR 1978 SC 597 (India).
7. D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal, (1997) 1 SCC 416 (India).
8. Joginder Kumar v. State of U.P., (1994) 4 SCC 260 (India).
9. Kanu Sanyal v. District Magistrate, Darjeeling, AIR 1974 SC 510 (India).
10. State of U.P. v. Ram Chandra Trivedi, AIR 1976 SC 2547 (India).
11. Union of India v. Raghubir Singh, (1989) 2 SCC 754 (India).
12. Rini Johar v. State of Madhya Pradesh, (2016) 11 SCC 703 (India).
13. Manoj Kumar Thru. His Son Mudit Kumar v. State of U.P., Habeas Corpus Writ Petition No. 137 of 2026 (Allahabad H.C., Lucknow Bench, Apr. 29, 2026), Neutral Citation No. 2026:AHC-LKO:31073-DB.
14. Santosh Gupta v. State of U.P. (Lawbeat.in, May 2026).

II. CONSTITUTIONAL AND STATUTORY PROVISIONS

15. INDIA CONST. art. 21.
16. INDIA CONST. art. 22.
17. INDIA CONST. art. 141.
18. INDIA CONST. art. 226.
19. The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, §§ 50, 57, 167, 309 (India).
20. The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, §§ 47, 58 (India).
21. The Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, § 19 (India).
22. The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, § 43B (India).