CBI a reputed investigating agency, expect it to mend their house: Delhi Court

While observing that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had not complied with the letter and spirit of Section 50 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 at the time of the arrest of an accused, a Special CBI Court in Delhi recently remarked that it expects the agency to “mend their house”..The order was passed by a CBI Court presided over by Judge Naveen Kumar Kashyap while dealing with an application for police custody of accused Yasmin Kapoor in an FCRA violation case,.The agency claimed that the custodial interrogation of Kapoor was necessary to unearth the larger conspiracy in the case..Kapoor objected to the police custody on the ground that she had already been interrogated sufficiently after arrest and had sufficiently replied to all the queries, subject to the Fundamental Rights against self-incrimination available to her..After hearing the parties, the Court discussed the law pertaining to the arrest of a person at length. The Court iterated that the law mandates a police officer to state the facts and record the reason for arrest in writing. The law further requires the police officers to record the reasons in writing for not making the arrest as well, it said..Apart from this, the Court added that a police officer has to be further satisfied that the arrest is necessary for one or more purposes in terms of Section 41(a) to (e) of the CrPC..If the arrest effected by the police officer does not satisfy the requirement of Section 41, a Magistrate is duty-bound to not authorize further detention and release the accused, it said..In all cases where the arrest of a person is not required under Section 41(1) CrPc, the police officer is required to issue notice directing the accused to appear before him at a specified place and time, the Court said..The Court then stated that for a magistrate to assess if remand is necessary, the investigating agency is required to send the case diary along with the remand report to enable the Magistrate to appreciate the factual scenario and apply his mind..After perusing the facts of the present case and the observations made in the arrest memo read with the case diary, the Court opined that it was unable to agree with the CBI’s stand that there was compliance of Section 50 CrPC in letter and spirit..The Court also relied on the Supreme Court’s judgement in P Chidambaram’s case to state that the investigation of a cognizable offence, including the interrogation of the accused, is exclusively reserved for the investigating agency whose power is unfettered so long as the investigating officer exercises his powers well within the provisions of the law..It was further noted that although the investigation was pending for more than a year, the CBI added Section 467 IPC a day after the accused was arrested, in order to bypass the guidelines given by the Supreme Court to investigating agencies regarding the law of arrest when the offence is punishable with less than 7 years of imprisonment..In spite of the flaws, the Court opined that the investigation in the case should not suffer. It nonetheless expected the CBI to “mend their house”..“Furthermore, the fact remains that due to some lapses/negligence of the investigating agencies, the proper investigation of a case should not suffer. And it is expected from a reputed investigating agency like CBI that it would look into the same and would mend their house.”.Since the present case related to a criminal conspiracy, the Court ultimately opined that the custodial interrogation of the accused was necessary and remanded the accused to four days of CBI custody..Advocates Tanveer Ahmed Mir, Faheem Shah, Laksh Khanna, Prabhav Ralli, and Vaibhav Suri appeared for Tarun Kapoor and Yasmin Kapoor..Read the Order: