Pune: The Supreme Court on Thursday confirmed the interim bail granted on April 22 to Shivani Agarwal, who had spent over ten months in judicial custody for allegedly tampering with the blood samples of her 17-year-old son in the Pune Porsche hit-and-run case.
The bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) B.R. Gavai and Justice Augustine George Masih held that the requirement to provide written grounds of arrest applies to all offences under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), and not just under special laws such as the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) or the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
The court emphasised that failure to furnish written grounds of arrest, in a language understood by the arrestee, renders both the arrest and subsequent remand illegal. “The requirement of informing the arrested person of the grounds of arrest under Article 22(1) of the Constitution is not a mere formality but a mandatory constitutional safeguard. If a person is not informed of the grounds of arrest as soon as may be, it amounts to a violation of fundamental rights under Article 21, rendering the arrest illegal,” the bench observed.
The court, while confirming the bail, further left it open for the prosecution to seek remand or custody by moving an application before the concerned trial court. In doing so, the top court said that the reasons and necessity for the same must be specified after supplying the grounds of arrest in writing to the accused, either before the magistrate or the trial court, as the case may be.
The ruling came during the hearing of a batch of criminal appeals where the accused contended that they were not informed of the grounds of arrest in writing, in violation of Article 22(1) of the Constitution and Section 50 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (now Section 47 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023). The court clarified that the prosecution may seek remand or custody only after supplying the written grounds of arrest to the accused before the magistrate.
Agarwal’s bail relates to the May 19, 2024, Pune incident in which her minor son, while driving his father’s Porsche car, allegedly ran over and killed two IT professionals — Aneesh Awadhiya and Ashwini Koshta. She was arrested for allegedly tampering with his blood samples.
Senior advocate Vikram Chaudhari, along with advocates Dhvani Shah, Rishi Sehgal, and Nikhil Jain, and AOR Muskaan Khurana, appeared for Agarwal.
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