Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India and Others — 2023 INSC 866

Facts

Pankaj Bansal and his father Basant Bansal approached the Supreme Court after the Punjab and Haryana High Court declined to set aside their arrests by the Directorate of Enforcement under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, together with the remand orders which had carried their detention from investigative custody into judicial custody, the appeals therefore arising from a challenge to the legal foundation of confinement rather than from a final determination of the money laundering allegations. The background involved two separate enforcement investigations which became connected through the appellants and the circumstances of their arrest, the earlier investigation having arisen from complaints by purchasers of residential properties developed by the IREO Group while the later investigation followed a corruption case alleging that a judicial officer had shown favour to persons connected with that group and the M3M Group.

Between 2018 and 2020 purchasers obtained registration of thirteen first information reports alleging irregularities in the management of two residential projects, upon which the Directorate recorded its first Enforcement Case Information Report on 15 June 2021 concerning the IREO Group and its vice chairman and managing director, although neither the M3M Group nor the two appellants appeared as accused in the underlying reports or that enforcement record and no allegations were then made against them in those documents. When the Directorate filed its prosecution complaint on 14 January 2022 against seven named accused under the procedural provisions governing the Special Court, the M3M Group and the appellants were again absent from the accused list, while the number of underlying first information reports had increased to thirty and the complaint was pending before the Special Judge whose alleged conduct subsequently supplied the background to the second investigation.

On 17 April 2023 the Anti Corruption Bureau at Panchkula registered a case under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 together with the criminal conspiracy provision of the Indian Penal Code, naming the then Special Judge, his nephew who worked with the M3M Group, Roop Bansal and other unknown persons as accused upon information concerning alleged favouritism towards persons associated with the two business groups. Although Basant Bansal was not included in the accused list of that report, its narrative referred to him with his brother Roop Bansal as an owner of the M3M Group to whom favour was allegedly shown, whereas Pankaj Bansal did not appear even in the narrative, a distinction which later mattered when the Directorate attempted to explain its action through a broader reference to the owners of that group.

The Directorate called for information and documents concerning company transactions in May 2023 before searching M3M properties and effecting seizures of assets and accounts on 1 June, following which it arrested Roop Bansal on 8 June in connection with the first enforcement investigation and the two appellants sought protection against apprehended arrest in that same investigation. By separate orders of 9 June 2023 the Delhi High Court granted the appellants interim anticipatory protection until the next hearing on 5 July subject to conditions, noting that they had not been named in the first enforcement record, that the Directorate had not yet implicated them in a scheduled offence and that Pankaj Bansal had not even been summoned in the matter, while the Directorate challenged those protective orders before the Supreme Court through proceedings which were stated to remain pending.

On 13 June 2023 the Directorate recorded a second Enforcement Case Information Report based on the corruption report of 17 April, identifying the judicial officer, his nephew, Roop Bansal and the other persons described in that report, thereby opening a second money laundering investigation four days after the appellants had obtained the interim protection concerning the first. At approximately 6.15 in the evening on the day when that second enforcement record was created, the Directorate sent summons requiring both appellants to attend its Rajokri office in New Delhi at 11 the following morning in connection with the first investigation, which was the investigation covered by their interim protection and in response to which they presented themselves at the specified place and time.

While Pankaj Bansal was already at the office in compliance with that summons, he received a further summons at 4.52 in the afternoon requiring attendance before another investigating officer at 5 that afternoon in connection with the second investigation, although the record was unclear about when an equivalent summons concerning the second investigation had been served on Basant Bansal and the Directorate maintained that he had earlier refused to receive it. It was nevertheless undisputed that Basant Bansal was present at the office at 11 that morning, that the Directorate arrested him at 6 in the evening and that it arrested Pankaj Bansal at 10.30 that night, both arrests being made under Section 19 in the second investigation rather than under the first investigation for which their attendance had originally been required.

After taking the appellants to Panchkula the Directorate produced them before the Vacation Judge who also exercised the relevant sessions jurisdiction, serving them with the remand application and obtaining an order on 15 June which authorised five days of investigative custody on the stated need for custodial interrogation, followed by another five days on 20 June and judicial custody after the order of 26 June. The appellants initially challenged the first remand before the Delhi High Court, which directed them towards the Punjab and Haryana High Court as the appropriate forum for that challenge, following which they withdrew their Supreme Court proceedings against the Delhi order with liberty to approach the latter High Court and brought the writ petitions from which the present appeals arose. The Punjab and Haryana High Court first declined the appellants’ request concerning the scope of Section 19 because it understood the request as a constitutional challenge to a provision already upheld by the Supreme Court, subsequently refusing to invalidate the arrests and remands or release the appellants in view of the seriousness of the allegations, although the actual petitions sought construction of the safeguards within the provision rather than its constitutional invalidation.

Issues

The principal issue was whether the arrests had complied with Section 19 and whether the judicial remand orders had properly examined that compliance, the Supreme Court expressly putting aside the parties’ arguments concerning actual involvement in money laundering so that the determination would remain directed towards the legality of arrest and confinement instead of becoming an adjudication of guilt. A connected issue concerned the effect of the judicial remand orders upon an allegedly unlawful arrest, requiring the Court to determine whether the Directorate could rely upon the fact of subsequent remand as sufficient protection against scrutiny when the orders themselves were challenged for failing to verify the statutory safeguards on which lawful custody depended.

The Court also had to consider whether the constitutional validity of Section 19 previously upheld in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary exhausted every possible question about its construction, particularly the meaning of informing an arrested person of the grounds of arrest where the earlier judgment had not specified the mode through which that information must be made available. Another issue concerned the connection between an officer’s belief that a person was guilty of money laundering and allegations of evasiveness or non cooperation during questioning, requiring attention to whether dissatisfaction with answers could supply the statutory basis for arrest without the material and recorded belief which the special provision required.

The method of conveying the grounds formed the central interpretive issue because the Directorate asserted that written grounds had been read out, explained or allowed to be read without furnishing copies, while the appellants disputed adequate communication and the Court had to assess whether those practices fulfilled the constitutional purpose of enabling the arrested person to understand the accusation and seek effective legal relief. Finally the sequence in which the Directorate created the second investigation and arrested persons who had obtained protection in the first raised a question about the lawful purpose of the power, requiring the Court to examine the asserted investigative justification alongside the documentary chronology without assuming that protection in one investigation automatically prevented all lawful action in another.

Submissions

The appellants maintained that their arrests represented an abuse of statutory authority and process, contending that the Directorate had failed to satisfy the safeguards within Section 19 and that the Special Court had authorised custody mechanically without independently determining whether the material and recorded reasons supported lawful arrest. Their prayers asked for the provision to be construed in conformity with the principles recognised in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary, proposing that the material supporting the officer’s belief should meet a demanding evidentiary standard, that guilt should signify more than suspicion and that the remand court should examine the grounds and necessity of arrest rather than merely accept the investigating authority’s request.

The appellants further argued that the communication obligation required physical provision of the arrest grounds, connecting the statutory requirement of written reasons with the rules governing arrest records and the information necessary to challenge confinement, while seeking to quash the arrest orders, arrest memoranda and consequential judicial remands rather than asking the Court only for discretionary bail. The Directorate’s replies defended both the underlying investigation and the arrests, asserting that investigation in the first matter had disclosed involvement of M3M promoters despite their absence from the original accused lists and that the appellants had deliberately withheld information within their knowledge which was needed to establish their roles in money laundering.

It alleged that the appellants had avoided questioning and failed to comply with earlier summons, referring to summons of 4, 6 and 7 June in support of the accusation against Pankaj Bansal, while maintaining that immediate questioning in the second investigation was justified by the need to obtain information from persons whose conduct allegedly frustrated the ongoing investigation. The Directorate also claimed that the corruption report specifically implicated Pankaj Bansal and the owners of the M3M Group, that sufficient evidence had emerged to form the statutory belief concerning guilt and that the arrests followed the prescribed procedure, relying upon alleged capacity to influence witnesses or authorities and tamper with evidence as further reasons for investigative custody.

Concerning communication of the grounds, the Directorate said that Basant Bansal first refused to sign the written record before the grounds were read and explained to him in Hindi before witnesses, whereas Pankaj Bansal read the written grounds and signed them with witnesses, further stating that information about the arrests had been telephonically given to family members. The Directorate relied upon decisions concerning custody pursuant to judicial remand to contend that the later judicial orders rendered the legality of the initial arrest immaterial, while referring to Delhi and Bombay High Court decisions which treated oral information about the grounds as sufficient under Section 19 without requiring that a written copy be served upon the arrested person. Although both sides addressed the merits of the money laundering allegations, those submissions did not become findings in these appeals because the Court confined its inquiry to statutory compliance and judicial custody, which also meant that the appellants’ proposed formulations concerning the quality of evidence could not be treated as wholesale adopted definitions merely because they appeared among their requested declarations.

Reasoning

The Court began by correcting the High Court’s identification of the challenge because an argument seeking interpretation of a valid provision differs from an argument seeking to invalidate it, with the unresolved details of Section 19 remaining open to judicial consideration notwithstanding the earlier declaration that the provision was constitutionally valid. That distinction preserved the authority of Vijay Madanlal Choudhary while permitting the Court to examine questions which it had not decided, since accepting the existence of the arrest power did not determine every aspect of its exercise or establish that a particular officer had complied with its conditions in a particular investigation.

The High Court’s reliance on settled constitutional validity therefore missed the actual request placed before it, which concerned the meaning and enforcement of safeguards within the provision, although the Supreme Court proceeded to determine the relevant issues itself rather than making the interpretive error the sole reason for returning the matter to the High Court. The Court next rejected the notion that a judicial remand automatically immunised the preceding arrest against challenge, explaining that the Directorate’s cited decisions principally addressed habeas corpus sought after remand whereas these appeals directly contested the remand orders for their failure to test whether the arrest satisfied Section 19.

Where the authority of the remand order was itself challenged on that foundation, relying upon its existence assumed the answer to the very issue requiring decision, because the Court first had to know whether the judge had performed the statutory examination which could justify continued custody rather than merely issued an order authorising it. This reasoning did not disregard the difference between executive arrest and judicial detention but required that the transition from one to the other be supported by lawful scrutiny, so that the presence of a judicial order could not cure an arrest defect merely through the formal change in the institution responsible for confinement.

The statutory framework recognised in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary supplied the starting point because Section 65 permitted the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 to operate in matters including arrest and investigation where it was not inconsistent with the special enactment, while Section 19 supplied particular conditions governing the Directorate’s power to arrest a person believed guilty of money laundering. The earlier judgment had treated the vesting of that power in senior authorised officers together with written reasons, disclosure of grounds, forwarding of the order and material to the Adjudicating Authority and timely production before a court as protections against arbitrary deprivation of liberty, rather than as dispensable practices which could be overlooked whenever the alleged offence was serious.

The reasons supporting the officer’s belief had to be recorded in writing because accountability depended upon an identifiable basis for the decision, while the forwarding obligation exposed the arrest order and supporting material to the statutory oversight mechanism instead of leaving the decision entirely within the officer’s unrecorded assessment. Production before the competent court within the statutory period also connected Section 19 with Section 167 of the Code, enabling judicial examination of the grounds supporting custody after executive arrest and giving the accused a protection distinct from the officer’s own conclusion that arrest was justified.

The Court understood these safeguards as part of the basis upon which the earlier decision had sustained the stringent restrictions on bail under Section 45, since a demanding release regime could not be separated from the protections governing how the person entered custody and learned the grounds which would have to be addressed in seeking release. V. Senthil Balaji supplied a further explanation of the remand court’s duty, recognising that the authorised officer must record reasons and serve information about the arrest grounds while the court considering investigative custody must itself be satisfied that the special arrest provision had been followed before examining the request for custody.

The investigating authority therefore had to place adequate material before the court rather than treating its demand for interrogation as decisive, with the judicial function involving an assessment of statutory compliance and custody need which could not be performed by accepting the authority’s assurance that all formal requirements had been observed. The Court drew from that decision the consequence that non compliance with Section 19 benefited the arrested person through entitlement to release, while noting the statutory provision permitting action for such failure, thereby connecting enforcement of the safeguard with an effective remedy instead of treating its breach as an irregularity without consequence for confinement.

The grounds had actually been supplied in writing in V. Senthil Balaji, which mattered because its reference to service did not settle whether oral communication elsewhere would suffice, although its insistence upon judicial verification of Section 19 directly informed the assessment of the remand orders in the present case. The constitutional principle discussed in Madhu Limaye reinforced the same conclusion because remand after consideration of relevant matters could not repair the constitutional defect of arrest without compliance with Article 22, making the legality of the preceding deprivation of liberty relevant even after a judicial officer had become involved in custody.

Applying those principles to the first remand order, the Court found no recorded judicial finding that the arrest grounds had been examined to determine whether the Directorate had recorded the required belief concerning guilt, while the order’s references to seriousness and the stage of investigation addressed interrogation without demonstrating the necessary scrutiny of the arrest itself. The order included language about compliance with legal requirements within its recital of the prosecution’s case, which the Court did not accept as the judge’s own finding because its placement and wording continued the account of what the Directorate asserted rather than recording an independent judicial satisfaction after examining the relevant records.

That distinction between a submission reproduced in an order and a finding reached by the court was decisive to the remand analysis, since treating the former as the latter would allow the investigation’s assertion of legality to become its own judicial verification without identifying whether the officer’s recorded belief and the communication obligation had actually been checked. The defect therefore lay in the absence of the required examination rather than simply in the brevity of the order, with the Court directing attention to what the judge had satisfied himself about before authorising custody and refusing to infer compliance from the fact that he considered interrogation desirable.

Turning to the Directorate’s explanation of the chronology, the Court compared its replies with the underlying report and summons instead of accepting broad descriptions of involvement or obstruction, which revealed inaccuracies concerning both Pankaj Bansal’s identification in the corruption report and his supposed failure to comply with earlier summons. The reference to owners in the corruption report concerned Roop Bansal and his brother Basant Bansal rather than a generic category which necessarily included Pankaj Bansal, so that the Directorate’s assertion that Pankaj was specifically mentioned did not accord with the document upon which the second enforcement investigation rested.

Similarly the earlier June summons invoked against Pankaj had been issued to Basant rather than to him, while the first summons actually issued to Pankaj was the evening communication of 13 June requiring attendance the next morning, which he obeyed before receiving and obeying the further summons concerning the second investigation later that afternoon. The Court did not convert either documentary correction into a finding that Pankaj could never have been implicated through later evidence, but the inaccuracies undermined the explanation offered for hurried arrest because alleged prior avoidance could not support that explanation where the cited defaults were not his and his actual attendance was undisputed.

The timing of the second enforcement record also required explanation because its underlying corruption report had existed since April whereas the Directorate recorded the new matter only after the Delhi High Court had protected the appellants in the first investigation, immediately using the attendance secured for that first investigation as the occasion for arrest in the second. The Directorate had not informed the Delhi High Court about that other report or its asserted investigation when the interim protection was considered, although its later written submissions said inquiries had begun in May and its replies did not contain that account, which the Court viewed as a failure of transparency rather than a neutral administrative sequence.

Because the underlying report was already available when the Directorate opposed protection in the first matter, the Court considered it implausible that the agency was unaware of its existence, with the later recording of the second enforcement matter and rapid arrests presenting the appearance of retaliatory action directed against the benefit the appellants had just obtained. The Court also questioned how sufficient inquiry had been completed to form the necessary belief concerning the appellants’ involvement within approximately a day after the second enforcement record was created, particularly when the Directorate characterised that creation as following preliminary investigation without presenting a clear account of the examination leading to the arrests.

This assessment remained directed towards the lawfulness of the exercise of power rather than the proposition that a second investigation was inherently prohibited, because the objection arose from the combination of pre existing information, omission before the Delhi High Court, the immediate change of investigative basis during attendance and inadequate support for the asserted statutory belief. The Court’s discussion of improper purpose explained why that combination could matter even though the appellants had not employed every technical expression associated with malice or colourable exercise, since their categorical allegation that the arrests were an abuse of authority and process sufficiently raised the substance of the objection being examined.

From State of Punjab v. Gurdial Singh the Court drew the distinction between personal moral blame and misuse of entrusted power, under which action becomes unlawful when the real objective falls outside the purpose for which the legislature conferred the authority even if the officer presents it through the outward form of a legitimate statutory act. The relevant inquiry therefore concerned whether the power served its authorised object, with personal hostility neither being a necessary substitute for that inquiry nor being enough by itself to invalidate an action genuinely taken for the permitted statutory purpose, while foreign considerations which directed the exercise could establish the legal defect.

Collector of Allahabad v. Raja Ram Jaiswal reinforced the requirement that statutory authority be exercised reasonably and for legitimate reasons, while Ravi Yashwant Bhoir explained that an unauthorised purpose could constitute legal malice without proof of the kind of personal moral misconduct which the term might suggest in ordinary speech. Those authorities supplied the legal context for the Court’s conclusion that the Directorate’s conduct lacked the fairness and good faith expected of a powerful investigating agency, whose responsibility to combat money laundering required dispassionate action within the enactment rather than allowing the importance of its mission to excuse a use of power directed towards an extraneous end.

The reference to Devinder Singh further emphasised the obligation to follow the statutory procedure, which meant that the seriousness of the alleged financial wrongdoing could not displace the recorded belief and safeguards required by the very provision upon which the Directorate relied for authority to arrest. The Court separately addressed the accusation of evasiveness because non cooperation by a person summoned under Section 50 did not itself demonstrate that the person was guilty of money laundering, whereas Section 19 required a reasoned belief concerning that offence rather than dissatisfaction with how the person answered investigative questions.

The Directorate had not explained why Pankaj’s answers deserved the description evasive or produced the relevant record for the Court to verify that characterisation, leaving an assertion which could not be equated with the evidence and belief required by the arrest provision simply because it came from the investigating officer. The judgment’s reliance on Santosh v. State of Maharashtra further separated investigation from compelled confession because the right against self incrimination under Article 20 protected a person from being treated as uncooperative merely for refusing to admit guilt, so that an investigating authority could not make an admission the unstated benchmark by which every other answer became evasive.

Nor could absence during searches be used adversely where the Directorate had not insisted upon the appellants’ presence, which required the claimed obstruction to be tested against what the authority actually required rather than constructed from conduct which had not violated a communicated obligation. Having examined those defects, the Court turned to the specific meaning of informing an arrested person of the grounds, recognising that Section 19 did not expressly prescribe the mode of communication and that neither Vijay Madanlal Choudhary nor V. Senthil Balaji had fully resolved the difference between furnishing written grounds and merely permitting them to be heard or read.

The variation in practice across the country showed why a definite construction was necessary because the Directorate sometimes supplied copies while elsewhere officers read the grounds aloud or allowed the arrested person to read them, although all those practices purported to implement the same statutory obligation through the same prescribed arrest form. The Court considered the Delhi High Court’s distinction between informing and communicating, together with the Bombay High Court’s view that early oral communication sufficed, but assessed those interpretations against the constitutional function of the right rather than regarding the absence of the word writing in the communication clause as the end of the inquiry.

Article 22 required information about the grounds as soon as possible because a person deprived of liberty needed meaningful knowledge of the basis of that deprivation, with the practical ability to obtain legal assistance and pursue release forming part of the purpose which the statutory implementation had to preserve. The demand for meaningful information became particularly important under Section 45 because an accused seeking bail ordinarily had to address the special conditions concerning reasonable grounds for believing that the person was not guilty and the likelihood of offending while on bail after the prosecutor had an opportunity to oppose release.

Without knowing the grounds on which the officer had formed the belief of guilt, the arrested person could not effectively place a response before the Special Court addressing that belief, which made communication relevant not merely to understanding the occurrence of arrest but to exercising the statutory avenue through which liberty might be restored. The Court therefore connected the arrest information with the actual burden confronting an applicant under the special release provision, rejecting a form of compliance which delivered words without leaving the person able to recall and use the grounds in obtaining advice or presenting a supported application.

That connection did not require disclosure of the entire Enforcement Case Information Report because Vijay Madanlal Choudhary had explained that the internal enforcement record might contain material whose disclosure could prejudice investigation, while the present issue concerned the grounds specific to the person arrested and the constitutional right to know those grounds. Similarly the Court did not hold that every item forwarded to the Adjudicating Authority must be handed to the arrested person, distinguishing the order and supporting material sent through the statutory oversight mechanism from the individual grounds which had to be communicated to make the right effective.

The existence of written reasons under Section 19 weakened any practical justification for refusing a written copy because the officer already had to record the grounds supporting the decision, making the disputed difference one of providing the arrested person with that usable record rather than requiring an entirely new investigative account to be prepared. The rules governing arrest records also supported a uniform approach because Rule 6 required an arrest order in the prescribed Form III, through which the authorised officer recorded the arrest and stated that the person had been informed of its grounds, although the common form did not justify treating markedly different methods of information as equally adequate without regard to their effect.

A prescribed declaration of compliance could not resolve whether compliance had actually occurred, particularly where one officer furnished the document while another merely permitted a fleeting reading of it, because the arrested person’s ability to retain the information depended upon the substantive mode of communication rather than the wording of the arrest order’s certification. The first practical reason for written supply concerned proof because oral reading could produce a dispute between the officer and the arrested person about what had been communicated, illustrated by Basant’s case where the Directorate relied on witnesses while he had not signed the grounds and disputed adequate information.

Supplying a copy under acknowledgment created a more reliable record of communication and reduced the uncertainty which could otherwise undermine detention, whereas leaving the issue to an officer’s assertion unnecessarily placed a fundamental safeguard within a factual contest which the simple provision of the document could avoid. The Court did not accept the presence of witnesses as an adequate answer to that difficulty in Basant’s circumstances, since their certification did not supply him with a retained statement of the grounds or remove the dispute about the communication, making the problem both evidential and practical rather than merely a question of how many persons supported the officer’s account.

The second reason concerned the arrested person’s capacity to remember detailed information at a moment of distress, with the grounds in V. Senthil Balaji extending to six pages and demonstrating that a reading opportunity could require retention of substantial material which might be impossible to reproduce accurately after the event. Although the grounds concerning these appellants were not produced before the Supreme Court, the Court explained that comparable length would make recollection difficult and that even shorter grounds could be inadequately understood by a person whose immediate loss of liberty affected the ability to remain composed and remember the details needed for legal advice.

The constitutional objective could not depend upon an assumption that an arrested person possessed an exceptional memory or calmness, because a right intended to assist the person in that vulnerable position would become ineffective if the authority could discharge it by permitting a reading without giving the means to consult the information later. The Directorate’s contention that the grounds were produced at remand did not resolve that problem because availability to the judge served a different function from provision to the arrested person, who needed the document for understanding, consultation and presentation of the grounds for release rather than merely assurance that the court had access to it.

The Court also addressed confidentiality rather than leaving the investigation interest unexplained, observing that grounds personal to an arrested person would ordinarily not risk disclosure of sensitive investigative material while recognising that genuinely sensitive passages could be redacted before the remaining grounds were supplied. That qualification preserved the integrity of investigation without allowing it to become a general justification for withholding the written grounds, since a limited protective edit addressed the identified sensitivity while leaving the person with the information through which the constitutional and statutory purpose could still be realised.

The resulting interpretation required written grounds to be furnished as a matter of course and without exception, expressed by the Court as the necessary practice henceforth, while its application to the appeals rested upon the admitted failure to provide copies together with the inadequacy of mere reading under Article 22 and Section 19. The word henceforth belonged to the Court’s statement of the required practice and did not turn its present conclusion into a declaration that the appellants’ arrests were adequate until some later occasion, because the Court expressly held those arrests inconsistent with the provision and ordered relief in the very appeals in which it clarified the obligation.

The Delhi and Bombay decisions relied upon for the contrary view were therefore rejected as stating an incorrect rule, while the ruling preserved the distinction between individual written grounds and wholesale disclosure of the enforcement record or every item of supporting evidence, which remained outside the requirement established here. Taken together the failures in communication, the absence of adequate judicial verification and the Directorate’s arbitrary sequence of action prevented the arrests and consequent detention from being sustained, without requiring the Supreme Court to decide whether the appellants ultimately committed the alleged offence or deserved bail on an assessment of their guilt.

Decision

The Supreme Court allowed the appeals and set aside the challenged Punjab and Haryana High Court orders, the arrest orders and memoranda, the investigative and judicial remand orders and the orders consequential upon them, thereby removing the legal basis for detention which those proceedings had supplied. It directed immediate release of the appellants unless their confinement was validly required in connection with another case, preserving the effect of an independently lawful custody basis while refusing to retain the detention founded on the arrests under challenge, with no order as to costs in the circumstances.

The operative relief did not acquit the appellants or conclude the merits of the money laundering accusations, since the Court had expressly reserved those matters from consideration and determined instead that the manner of arrest and the remand process failed the governing statutory and constitutional requirements. The enduring legal explanation therefore concerned meaningful written communication, recorded belief supported by the statutory material and the independent responsibility of the remand court, with the actual release reflecting failure of those conditions rather than a general exemption from investigation for persons who had obtained protection in another enforcement matter.

Source: Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India and Others · 2023 INSC 866