Guwahati, Nov. 5 -- The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the 24-hour deadline for producing an arrested person before a Magistrate begins from the time of detention, not from the formal recording of arrest.

A bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S Chandurkar held that treating detention and formal arrest as separate stages for calculating this period violates Article 22(2) of the Constitution and Section 56 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS).

The bench clarified that time spent questioning or investigating a person before a formal arrest must be included in the constitutionally mandated 24-hour period. The only time that can be excluded is the duration required to travel from the place of arrest to the Magistrate's ...