Ruling of Police

SUPREME COURT & HIGHCOURT

Rulings on POLICE

POLICE AND THE JUDICIAL PROCESS INTRODUCTORY NOTE As a key agency of the Criminal Justice administration the Police is responsible for performing multi-faceted functions such' as' the prevention of crime, maintenance of law and order, conduct of investigation of crimes, production of undertrials before the Courts and post sentence survillence over the criminals: etc. In view of the functional' peculiarities the Police tends to become the frontal' formal agency to come in contact, with the raw realities a/crime including the accused and the victims. All this makes the Police not only an all pervasive criminal justice agency but also exposes it to frequent social censures both of formal as well as informal nature, and makes them the centre of lot of controversies regarding their professional roles. In a Rule of Law society the Police, like the other criminal justice agencies, functions within the legal framework of the Constitutional and the Municipal Laws that comprise mainly of the Constitution of India, 1950, The Code of criminal Procedure, 1973, the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 and the Police Act etc. Though the vide range of statutory laws constitute, the normative basis for the Police functions, but at the actual functional level, often' doubts and controversies arise, regarding the, ambit and interpretations of the statutory rules, thereby calling for frequent adjudications by the courts. In the tradition of the Theory of Precedent the judgments of the appellate, courts have a binding or persuasive value for the later decisions on the point. Particularly the "judgments of the Supreme Court of India which are accorded the highest

precedential value in terms of the Article 141 of the Constitution which reads : The Law declared by the Supreme Court shall be binding on all courts within' the Territory of India". Thus for all the courts as well as, other State agencies, the...