SUPREME COURT & HIGHCOURT Rulings on POLICE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE
POLICE AND THE JUDICIAL PROCESS
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