SUPREME COURT & HIGHCOURT Rulings on POLICE

INTRODUCTORY NOTEPOLICE AND THE JUDICIAL PROCESSAs a key agency of the Criminal Justice administration the Police isresponsible for performing multi-faceted functions such' as' the preventionof crime, maintenance of law and order, conduct of investigation of crimes,production of undertrials before the Courts and post sentence survillenceover the criminals: etc. In view of the functional' peculiarities the Policetends to become the frontal' formal agency to come in contact, with the rawrealities a/crime including the accused and the victims. All this makes thePolice not only an all pervasive criminal justice agency but also exposes itto frequent social censures both of formal as well as informal nature, andmakes them the centre of lot of controversies regarding their professionalroles.In a Rule of Law society the Police, like the other criminal justice agencies,functions within the legal framework of the Constitutional and the MunicipalLaws that comprise mainly of the Constitution of India, 1950, The Code ofcriminal Procedure, 1973, the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, the Protection ofHuman Rights Act, 1993 and the Police Act etc. Though the vide range ofstatutory laws constitute, the normative basis for the Police functions, but atthe actual functional level, often' doubts and controversies arise, regardingthe, ambit and interpretations of the statutory rules, thereby calling forfrequent adjudications by the courts. In the tradition of the Theory ofPrecedent the judgments of the appellate, courts have a binding orpersuasive value for the later decisions on the point. Particularly the"judgments of the Supreme Court of India which are accorded the highest