Legal Rights of Indian Citizens

From: Amanulla G [mailto:meetamanulla@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 6:29 PM
Subject: Legal rights of Indian Citizen

Legal Rights of Indian Citizens

Salaams to all. On 29th July 2007, KFD (Karnataka Forum for Dignity) conducted a talk on "Legal awareness" at Gurunanak Bhavan. This assumed its importance in the light of Sachar Committee report showing that Muslims form 40% of prison population in India.

A lawyer from Mangalore, Naushad sahab spoke about the legalities involved with complaint, arrest, bail, judicial custody, police custody. He detailed regarding the importance of having the understanding about legal rights of a person. During his talk he mentioned the supreme court judgment which has set guidelines to be followed in all cases of arrest:

1. Police arresting and interrogating suspects should wear "accurate, visible and clear" identification and name tags, and details of interrogating police officers should be recorded in a register.

2. Police making an arrest should prepare a memo of arrest to be signed by a witness and countersigned by the arrested person, giving the time and date of arrest.

3. Anyone arrested should be entitled to have a friend or relative informed of their arrest and place of detention "as soon as practicable".

4. If such a friend or relative lives outside the district, the time and place of arrest and place of detention should be notified to them by police through the Legal Aid Organization within eight to 12 hours.

5 Anyone arrested should be informed of their right to inform someone of their arrest and detention "as soon as" they are arrested.

6. Information about the arrest and the details of the person informed of the arrest should be kept in a diary at the place of detention along with names of police officers supervising custody.

7. On request, anyone arrested should be examined at the time of arrest and any injuries recorded. This "inspection memo" should be signed by the arrested person and the arresting police officer,and a copy given to the arrested person.

8. Anyone arrested should be medically examined by a doctor every 48 hours during detention.

9. Copies of all the documents referred to above should be sent to the magistrate.

10. Anyone arrested should be permitted to meet their lawyer during interrogation "though not throughout the interrogation".

11. A police control room should be established at all district and state headquarters with information regarding details of those arrested and their place of custody displayed on a noticeboard.

He also mentioned about the importance of stating truth regarding the time of arrest when a person is produced before magistrate.

He mentioned two important things to be followed to counter illegal detentions by police.
1. Search warrant
2. Habeas corpus.

It is important to make sure that during the hearing, judge makes a note of whatever important things that are being mentioned by the accused. There seems to be no easy book capturing legal rights in a single book, he advised to contact a known lawyer to get more details about the same at his free time. It would be great if a someone has already compiled these aspects in a book or has got pointers where someone can refer at a single place.

With Best Regards,

Amanulla


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