Kochi : The high court has struck down key clauses in the guidelines for producing accused persons before registered medical practitioners and judicial officers, which required arrested persons to be produced before judicial officers “as far as possible” between 10am and 5pm and permitted production after 5pm only in “exceptional circumstances”.
The state govt had issued the guidelines in the aftermath of the death of Dr Vandana Das, a house surgeon at Taluk Hospital, Kottarakkara, who was attacked by an accused brought to the hospital by police for a medical examination in 2023. The petitioner challenged Clauses 17 to 21 of the guidelines, which imposed reporting, attendance and monitoring requirements on police and prosecutors for production outside regular hours. He further argued that the expressions ‘as far as possible’ and ‘exceptional circumstances’ could undermine the constitutional mandate for production before a magistrate within 24 hours of arrest and compel police officers and prosecutors to justify compliance with the prescribed protocol. The state defended the guidelines, saying they were framed after Dr Vandana Das’s death and did not dilute the 24-hour limit under Article 22(2) of the Constitution and Section 58 of the BNSS. The court held that the 24-hour period is an outer limit, not a licence to defer production until the deadline approaches.
It observed that the expressions “as far as possible” and “exceptional circumstances” could create a practical disincentive to prompt production, delaying judicial scrutiny, access to legal aid and the accused’s opportunity to challenge the arrest or seek bail. An executive protocol, the bench said, cannot dilute constitutional and statutory safeguards or subordinate them to administrative convenience. A bench of Justices V Raja Vijayaraghavan and K V Jayakumar issued the order on a PIL filed by P S Subeesh, a lawyer from Irinjalakuda in Thrissur, challenging the clauses in the guidelines governing the production of accused persons before registered medical practitioners in hospitals or judicial officers for medical examination and medico-legal procedures. The court directed the state to issue fresh guidelines in accordance with its findings.