MUHABATH BEEVI Vs. VASANTHA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE prayer in the contempt petition is to punish the respondent contemner for the deliberate and wilful disobedience of the guidelines issued by the Supreme Court in D.K.Basu v. State of West Bengal reported in AIR 1997 SC 610.

(2.) IN that case, the Supreme Court in para 36 of its judgment gave 11 guidelines which are required to be followed, in case of arrest or detention. These 11 guidelines have now widely come to be known as the 11 commandments to be implemented by a Station House Officer. The guidelines Nos. 2 and 7 are usefully extracted for the case on hand: "2. That the police officer carrying out the arrest of the arrestee shall prepare a memo of arrest at the time of arrest and such memo shall be attested by at least one witness, who may be either member of the family of the arrestee or a respectable person of the locality from where the arrest is made. It shall also be countersigned by the arrestee and shall contain the time and date of arrest. 7. The arrestee should, where he so requests, be also examined at the time of his arrest and major and minor injuries, if any, present on his/her body, must be recorded at that time. The "Inspection Memo" must be signed both by the arrestee and the police officer effecting the arrest and its copy provided to the arrestee."

(3.) THE Supreme Court also gave directions as to what should be done for the violation of these guidelines by any officer of the police and it is out in paragraph Nos. 37 and 38. The same is usefully extracted below: "37. Failure to comply with the requirements hereinabove mentioned shall apart from rendering the concerned official liable for departmental action, also render him liable to be punished for contempt of Court and the proceedings for contempt of Court may be instituted in any High Court of the country, having territorial jurisdiction over the matter. 38. The requirements, referred to above flow from Articles 21 and 22(1) of the Constitution and need to be strictly followed. These would apply with equal force to the other governmental agencies also to which a reference has been made earlier."