I. Introduction

The requirement that a person taken into custody be informed of why he is being deprived of his liberty is among the oldest and most jealously guarded safeguards in criminal procedure. In India, this safeguard finds its source in Article 22(1) of the Constitution, which provides that

The provision was a direct response to the widespread and arbitrary use of preventive and punitive detention during the colonial period, when persons were routinely taken into custody without explanation and without recourse to counsel. Article 22(1) was intended to ensure that the newly independent Republic would not replicate that experience within its own criminal process.

For decades, the phrase “grounds of arrest” in Article 22(1) was treated, in practice, as interchangeable with the general categories of justification recorded by the police for effecting an arrest. It is only through a sustained line of authority culminating in Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India, Prabir Purkayastha v. State (NCT of Delhi), Vihaan Kumar v. State of Haryana and, most recently, Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra, that the Supreme Court has authoritatively drawn a sharp conceptual line between the “reasons for arrest” and the “grounds of arrest” — a distinction on which, notwithstanding its constitutional significance, there continues to be considerable confusion among both members of the Bar and investigating agencies. This article examines that distinction, its statutory anchoring, and the judicial evolution that has rendered it a mandatory, non-negotiable safeguard for personal liberty.

II. The Statutory Framework: Two Distinct Provisions

The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (“BNSS”), like the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (“CrPC”) before it, embodies the distinction between reasons and grounds in two separate provisions, each serving a different function.

Section 35, BNSS (corresponding to Section 41, CrPC) confers upon a police officer a discretionary power to arrest a person without a warrant, on the satisfaction of certain enumerated circumstances for instance, that the arrest is necessary to prevent the person from committing a further offence, to ensure proper investigation, to prevent the person from tempering with or destroying evidence, or to prevent him from being induced to threaten witnesses. The provision is markedly permissive: it employs the word “may”, not “shall.” These enumerated circumstances constitute the “reasons for arrest”  the general, statutorily prescribed categories that could justify the arrest of any accused person, largely independent of the individual facts of his case.

Section 47, BNSS (corresponding to Section 50, CrPC), by contrast, is couched in mandatory language. It obliges every police officer or other person arresting any person without a warrant to

Unlike Section 35, this provision admits of no discretion. Read together with Section 50A, CrPC (obliging the police to inform a friend, relative or nominated person of the arrest and the place of detention), Section 47 constitutes the statutory machinery through which the constitutional guarantee under Article 22(1) is given practical effect.

The distinction, therefore, is embedded in the statute itself: one provision furnishes the police with the power to arrest (reasons); the other compels the police, once that power has been exercised, to disclose to the arrested person the specific case against him (grounds). The difficulty in practice has been that investigating agencies frequently treat compliance with the former as satisfying the latter — reproducing the standard statutory categories in the arrest memo and describing that recital as sufficient communication of the “grounds of arrest.” It is precisely this conflation that the Supreme Court has now authoritatively rejected.

III. The Early Jurisprudence: Laying the Foundation

Tarapada De v. State of West Bengal [1], is among the earliest pronouncements interpreting Article 22(1). The Court held that the object of the provision is to enable the arrested person to know the grounds of his arrest so that he may prepare his defence, apply for bail, or move for a writ. Article 22(1) was construed as a direction to the arresting authority to disclose the grounds immediately, the words “as soon as may be” being read to mean as early as is reasonably practicable in the circumstances of the particular case.

State of Madhya Pradesh v. Shobharam [2], carried the principle further, holding that any delay in communicating the grounds of arrest must be justified by reference to reasonable circumstances, and that the right of an arrested person to be informed of the grounds of his arrest is not discharged merely by offering him the opportunity to furnish bail.

Joginder Kumar v. State of Uttar Pradesh [3], situated the safeguard within a broader framework of guidelines governing arrest during investigation, holding that a person is not liable to be arrested merely on suspicion of complicity in an offence; there must exist some reasonable justification, in the opinion of the investigating officer, for the arrest to be both necessary and justified. The Court was, even then, alive to the systemic misuse of the power of arrest, a concern later substantiated by the National Police Commission’s Third Report, which found that a substantial proportion of arrests made across the country were unnecessary or unjustified.

D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal [4], though concerned principally with custodial torture and the procedural safeguards attending arrest and detention, reinforced the same constitutional thread: that the power to arrest is not to be exercised as a matter of course, and that transparency and accountability at the point of arrest are constitutional imperatives, not mere administrative formalities.

Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar [5], addressed the pattern of routine, mechanical arrests particularly in cases under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code and directed police officers to record, against a statutory checklist under Section 41(1)(b), CrPC, the reasons which necessitated the arrest, and to issue a notice of appearance under Section 41A, CrPC where arrest was not necessary. Arnesh Kumar thus reinforced the discipline surrounding the “reasons for arrest” limb of the inquiry, without yet articulating a separate doctrine of “grounds of arrest.”

IV. The Turning Point: Pankaj Bansal and the PMLA Line of Cases

The foundation for this line of authority was laid in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary v. Union of India [6], where a three-Judge Bench, while upholding the constitutional validity of the PMLA’s arrest provisions, characterised the preconditions built into Section 19(1)  a “reason to believe”, recorded in writing, that the person is guilty of an offence under the Act  as stringent safeguards designed to prevent arbitrary exercise of the power to arrest, marking a deliberate departure from the comparatively wide power conferred on the police under Section 41, CrPC. The Court held that so long as the arrested person is informed of the grounds of his arrest, that is sufficient compliance with Section 19(1) and Article 22(1); the Enforcement Directorate was not obliged, as a matter of course, to furnish a copy of the Enforcement Case Information Report, since an ECIR is not the equivalent of an FIR. Vijay Madanlal Choudhary thus supplied both the vocabulary of “reason to believe” and “necessity to arrest” that would recur throughout the subsequent PMLA jurisprudence, and it was this decision that Pankaj Bansal was later called upon to refine on the specific question of the form in which grounds must be communicated.

The modern, sharpened form of the distinction was carried further in litigation concerning arrests by the Enforcement Directorate under Section 19 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (“PMLA”), which mirrors the constitutional language of Article 22(1). In Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India [7], the Supreme Court held that Section 19(1), PMLA requires the grounds of arrest to be furnished to the arrested person in writing, as a matter of course and without exception, and that non-compliance with this requirement vitiates the arrest and entitles the arrested person to be set at liberty unconditionally. Oral communication, or reliance on the arrested person’s own understanding of the case against him, was held to be no substitute for a written communication of grounds.

In Ram Kishor Arora v. Directorate of Enforcement [8], the Court clarified two further aspects: first, that the written grounds of arrest need not necessarily be furnished at the very moment of arrest, but must in any event be communicated within twenty-four hours; and second, that the ratio in Pankaj Bansal did not operate retrospectively. On the question of necessity, the Court reiterated that the “reason to believe” and “necessity to arrest” recorded by the authorised officer under Section 19(1) are themselves distinct requirements that must be demonstrably satisfied on the material before the officer, and that the power to arrest, being drastic in its consequence, cannot be exercised as a matter of routine merely because an offence under the PMLA is disclosed.

V. Prabir Purkayastha v. State (NCT of Delhi): The Distinction Crystallised

It is in Prabir Purkayastha v. State (NCT of Delhi) [9] , arising out of an arrest under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, that the Supreme Court articulated the distinction between “reasons for arrest” and “grounds of arrest” in terms that have since become the locus classicus on the subject. The Court, examining the arrest memo furnished to the appellant, observed that the column setting out the “reasons for arrest” recorded parameters that were purely formal in nature  to prevent the accused from committing a further offence, to ensure proper investigation, to prevent the accused from tampering with evidence, and similar considerations  and that these reasons could, without variation, be attributed to any person arrested on accusation of a crime.

The “grounds of arrest,” the Court held, stand on an altogether different footing: they must contain all such facts and material in the possession of the Investigating Officer as would enable the arrested accused to know, with reasonable particularity, the precise case set up against him facts specific and personal to him, sufficient to allow him to make a meaningful and effective representation against his arrest and remand, and to apply for bail. Reasons, in other words, are general and interchangeable; grounds are particular and case-specific. The Court declared the arrest and subsequent remand of the appellant invalid, holding that the mere reproduction of a remand application, or of formal reasons in an arrest memo, did not amount to communication of the grounds of arrest, and that this deficiency could not be cured by the subsequent filing of a chargesheet or by any later stage of the proceedings.

Significantly, the Court held that this requirement is not confined to arrests under special statutes such as the PMLA or the UAPA, but flows directly from Article 22(1) and is, accordingly, of universal application to every arrest made under the ordinary criminal law as well.

VI. Vihaan Kumar v. State of Haryana: Extension to Arrests Under the Ordinary Criminal Law

The universality of the principle was placed beyond doubt by the Supreme Court’s decision in Vihaan Kumar v. State of Haryana [10] , delivered in a case involving an ordinary arrest for cheating, forgery and criminal breach of trust, unconnected with any special statute. The State sought to justify the arrest by relying on an entry in the case diary recording that the appellant had been informed of the reasons for arrest, on the recital of particulars in the arrest memo and remand report, and on the fact that the appellant’s wife had separately been informed. The Punjab and Haryana High Court accepted this position and dismissed the appellant’s challenge.

The Supreme Court reversed. It held that the constitutional mandate under Article 22(1) is not discharged by documentation contained in the arrest memo, case diary or remand report unless that information is directly and demonstrably communicated to the arrested person himself, in a form and language he understands; that informing a relative of the fact of arrest is not a substitute for informing the arrested person of the grounds of his arrest; and that failure to comply with this requirement renders the arrest, and everything that follows from it including remand illegal ab initio, entitling the arrested person to release notwithstanding the subsequent stage the criminal proceedings may have reached. The word “communicate,” the Court emphasised, is a strong one: it requires that sufficient knowledge of the basic facts constituting the grounds be imparted effectively and fully to the arrested person, in writing, so as to enable him to make a purposeful and effective representation.

Vihaan Kumar thus removes any lingering doubt that the reasons/grounds distinction first worked out in the specialised context of the PMLA and the UAPA governs every arrest made under the general criminal law, including arrests made in the ordinary course by the police under the BNSS.

VII. State of Karnataka v. Sri Darshan: The Risk of Casual Invocation

That the reasons/grounds distinction is a substantive constitutional safeguard, and not a formula available to be invoked mechanically, is illustrated by the Supreme Court’s decision in State of Karnataka v. Sri Darshan  [11]  arising out of the Renukaswamy murder case. The Karnataka High Court had granted regular bail to the accused, in part on the ground that the grounds of arrest furnished to them were identical in content and had been supplied belatedly, relying on the reasons/grounds distinction laid down in Prabir Purkayastha. Cancelling that bail, the Supreme Court held that the High Court’s order suffered from serious infirmities and reflected a mechanical exercise of discretion, including an undue pre-trial evaluation of witness statements that properly fell within the domain of the trial court. The Court’s disapproval of the manner in which the High Court had invoked the grounds-of-arrest doctrine  in a case registered for murder under Section 302, IPC, on facts that left little doubt as to why the accused had been arrested  underscores that the doctrine exists to secure a meaningful, case-specific disclosure to the arrestee, and is not a technical device to be deployed irrespective of the sufficiency of the material actually placed on record; courts applying Prabir Purkayastha and Vihaan Kumar must accordingly examine, on the facts of each case, whether the arrested person was in substance deprived of the particulars necessary to defend himself, rather than treating any infelicity in the arrest memo as automatically fatal to the arrest.

VIII. Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra: Calibrating the Consequence of Non-Compliance

The most recent, and in some respects the most consequential, pronouncement on the subject is Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra [12] , a batch of appeals arising out of the Worli hit-and-run case, in which the appellant contended that his arrest was illegal for want of written grounds of arrest. The Bombay High Court had declined to quash the arrest, reasoning that the appellant was in any event aware of why he was being arrested, given his conduct in fleeing the scene and concealing the vehicle’s number plate. Affirming the outcome, but taking the opportunity to settle the law, the Supreme Court held, first, that non-supply of the grounds of arrest in writing to an arrestee, prior to or immediately after arrest, would not by itself vitiate an arrest already made or completed for non-compliance with Section 50, CrPC (Section 47, BNSS); a written copy must, however, be supplied within a reasonable period, and in any event not less than two hours before the arrestee’s production before a Magistrate, so as to afford a meaningful opportunity to oppose remand and seek bail. Second, and prospectively  that is, “henceforth”  the Court mandated that written communication of the grounds of arrest, in a language the arrestee understands, is a uniform constitutional requirement applicable to every arrest under the general criminal law, aligning the position under the BNSS/CrPC with that already settled for the PMLA and the UAPA in Pankaj Bansal and Prabir Purkayastha. Mihir Rajesh Shah therefore draws a considered distinction between the constitutional obligation to communicate grounds  which is treated as mandatory and enforceable prospectively without exception and the specific consequence of a failure to reduce those grounds to writing at the point of arrest, which does not, on the facts of an already-completed arrest, automatically render that arrest void. Several High Courts, including the Delhi and Orissa High Courts, have since had occasion to consider the temporal reach of this ruling, with the Orissa High Court cautioning that its prospective application cannot be read so restrictively as to dilute the pre-existing constitutional right under Article 22(1) itself.

The Delhi High Court has, in turn, given practical shape to the two-hour rule laid down in Mihir Rajesh Shah. In Brijesh Kothia v. State (NCT of Delhi) [13] , arising out of an NDPS Act prosecution against the directors of a pharmaceutical company, Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani held that where the investigating agency is already in possession of documentary material forming a cogent basis for arrest, the written grounds of arrest must be furnished to the arrestee at the time of arrest, or at the very least within a reasonable time and in no event later than two hours prior to his production before the Magistrate for remand; a common transit-remand application or police-custody-remand application, served on the accused only at the point of production, does not satisfy this requirement, since it does not disclose personalised grounds and is not furnished within the mandated window. On that basis, the arrest and remand of the accused, a company director, were held to be vitiated, and he was admitted to bail, without the illegality being treated as nullifying the investigation or trial itself. Significantly, the Bench went on to hold, relying on a subsequent Supreme Court order dated 01.04.2026 in Dr. Rajinder Rajan v. Union of India & Anr. (SLP (Crl.) Nos. 3326-3327 of 2026) — where the Supreme Court ordered release on similar facts notwithstanding that the arrest predated Mihir Rajesh Shah — that Mihir Rajesh Shah does not create a fresh prospective regime of its own, but merely reaffirms the constitutional requirement inherent in Article 22(1) as already elucidated in Pankaj Bansal, Prabir Purkayastha and Vihaan Kumar; consequently, the obligation to furnish written grounds of arrest continues to be traced to the date of Pankaj Bansal (03.10.2023) rather than to the date of Mihir Rajesh Shah itself. This view has since been applied by the same Bench to similarly situated co-accused, reinforcing that the sufficiency of compliance with Article 22(1) must be tested on the specific timeline of communication in each case, and not merely on whether some form of the grounds appears somewhere in the record.

The converse situation — an arrest predating Pankaj Bansal — was considered at length by the Kerala High Court in Ashraf v. Union of India [14] , a Division Bench decision of Justices Anil K. Narendran and Muralee Krishna S. arising out of a UAPA prosecution before the Special NIA Court, Ernakulam, in connection with the murder of an RSS leader in Palakkad. The appellant, arrested on 22.09.2022, contended in a second bail application that no written grounds of arrest had ever been furnished to him, and that his arrest was accordingly illegal under Pankaj Bansal, Prabir Purkayastha, Vihaan Kumar and Mihir Rajesh Shah. Undertaking a comprehensive review of the entire line of authority  Vijay Madanlal Choudhary, Pankaj Bansal, Ram Kishor Arora, Prabir Purkayastha, Vihaan Kumar and Mihir Rajesh Shah, the Court held that since the appellant’s arrest preceded the pronouncement of Pankaj Bansal on 03.10.2023, the “henceforth” mandate for written grounds of arrest had no application to him, and non-communication of grounds in writing was therefore not available as a ground to challenge his arrest. The Court accordingly rejected the appellant’s challenge on this limb, while separately examining, and rejecting, his claims to bail on the merits under the proviso to Section 43-D(5) of the UAPA and on grounds of parity and prolonged incarceration. Read together with Brijesh Kothia, this decision confirms that the reasons/grounds jurisprudence, for all its constitutional weight, continues to operate along the specific temporal line first drawn in Ram Kishor Arora: an arrest made before 03.10.2023 is tested by the standard that then prevailed, while an arrest made thereafter is held to the written-communication standard with the rigour Mihir Rajesh Shah and Brijesh Kothia now require.

IX. The Necessity of Arrest: A Further Safeguard

Apart from the ground of arrest and reason of arrest, the Apex Court in Satender Kumar Antil v. Central Bureau of Investigation & Ors., [15] , while discussing Section 41, CrPC, held that

The judgment further held that such non-compliance would lead to the grant of bail. In view of this pronouncement of the Apex Court, the arresting officer must now satisfy the necessity of arrest, in addition to the ground and reason of arrest.

Similarly, the Apex Court in Arvind Kejriwal v. Central Bureau of Investigation & Ors. [16] , Justice Ujjal Bhuyan held that “Power to arrest is one thing but the need to arrest is altogether a different thing. Just because an investigating agency has the power to arrest, it does not necessarily mean that it should arrest such a person.”

In Anil Ramesh Parerao v. State of Maharashtra [17] , the Bombay High Court, Justice N. J. Jamadar, following the judgment of the Apex Court in Satender Kumar Antil v. CBI on the aspect of “necessity of arrest,” held that

The necessity of arrest thus operates as a third, independent limb of scrutiny, alongside the reasons for arrest and the grounds of arrest. An arresting officer is now required to record and demonstrate not merely that a cognizable offence is disclosed, but that arrest, as opposed to any other course, is genuinely necessary in the facts of the case. Failure to satisfy this requirement, on the authority of Satender Kumar Antil, Arvind Kejriwal and Anil Ramesh Parerao, renders the arrest vulnerable to challenge and entitles the arrested person to bail.

X. The Corollary Safeguard: Communication to Friends, Relatives and Nominees.

The communication of the grounds of arrest, to be truly meaningful, is not exhausted by informing the arrested person alone. Section 50A, CrPC (and its BNSS equivalent) obliges the police to inform a friend, relative, or other person nominated by the arrested person of the fact of the arrest and the place where he is being held. The purpose of this additional obligation is practical: an arrested person, by reason of his detention, may not have ready or immediate access to legal process, whereas his relatives and friends, once informed, are in a position to promptly engage counsel and take the steps necessary to secure his release on bail. Communication of the grounds of arrest to the detenu and to his nominated relatives is not, therefore, a mere formality; it operationalises the right to personal liberty guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution, in addition to the specific guarantee under Article 22(1). Failure to observe either limb of this requirement exposes the arrest to challenge as unconstitutional and illegal.

XI. The Distinction Distilled

Reasons for arrest are the statutorily prescribed, general categories set out in Section 35, BNSS / Section 41, CrPC — that justify the exercise of the power of arrest as such: prevention of further offence, securing proper investigation, prevention of tampering with evidence, prevention of inducement or threat to witnesses, and the like. They answer the question, “why does the law permit arrest in a case of this kind?” and are, by their nature, capable of being reproduced verbatim in respect of any accused person.

Grounds of arrest, by contrast, are the specific facts and material in the possession of the Investigating Officer that connect this particular accused to this particular offence the individualised basis on which he, and not merely any accused person similarly placed, has been taken into custody. They answer the question, “why has this particular person been arrested?” and must be communicated in writing, directly to the arrested person, as soon as may be after arrest, so as to enable him to seek bail and to defend himself against remand.

The consequence of the distinction is not merely semantic. Recitation of the formal reasons for arrest in an arrest memo, however scrupulously done, does not discharge the constitutional obligation under Article 22(1); only the communication of case-specific grounds does. Non-compliance renders the arrest, and any remand founded upon it, illegal, and entitles the arrested person to release a consequence that cannot be cured by the subsequent progress of the investigation, including the filing of a chargesheet.

XII. Conclusion

The trajectory from Tarapada De through Joginder Kumar, Vijay Madanlal Choudhary, Pankaj Bansal, Prabir Purkayastha, Vihaan Kumar and, finally, Mihir Rajesh Shah traces the transformation of Article 22(1) from a general directive addressed to arresting authorities into an absolute, judicially enforceable safeguard of personal liberty. The distinction between reasons for arrest and grounds of arrest, far from being an academic nicety, now occupies the centre of that safeguard: it is the difference between an arrest that merely cites the law under which a person may be taken into custody, and one that discloses to him, in terms he can understand and act upon, the specific case he must answer. Investigating agencies, defence counsel and courts alike would do well to internalise this distinction, for it is on this precise ground communicated, in writing, to the person deprived of his liberty that the legality of an arrest, and the constitutional guarantee of Article 21, now turns.

Table of Cases Referred

[1] Tarapada De v. State of West Bengal, AIR 1951 SC 174

[2] State of Madhya Pradesh v. Shobharam, AIR 1966 SC 1910

[3] Joginder Kumar v. State of Uttar Pradesh, (1994) 4 SCC 260

[4] D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal, (1997) 1 SCC 416

[5] Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, (2014) 8 SCC 273

[6] Vijay Madanlal Choudhary v. Union of India, (2022) SCC OnLine SC 929

[7] Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India, (2023) 10 SCC 733

[8] Ram Kishor Arora v. Directorate of Enforcement, 2023 INSC 1082

V. Senthil Balaji v. State represented by Deputy Director, (2024) 3 SCC 51

[9] Prabir Purkayastha v. State (NCT of Delhi), 2024 SCC OnLine SC 934

[10] Vihaan Kumar v. State of Haryana, 2025 INSC 162

[11] State of Karnataka v. Sri Darshan @ Darshan Thoogudeepa & Ors., SLP (Crl.) Nos. 516-522 of 2025, decided on 14.08.2025

[12] Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra & Anr., 2025 INSC 1288

[13] Brijesh Kothia v. State (NCT of Delhi), 2026 SCC OnLine Del 3410

[14] Ashraf @ Ashraf Moulavi v. Union of India & Anr., 2026:KER:64863

[15] Satender Kumar Antil v. Central Bureau of Investigation & Ors., (2022) 10 SCC 51

[16] Arvind Kejriwal v. Central Bureau of Investigation & Ors., 2024 INSC 687

[17] Anil Ramesh Parerao v. State of Maharashtra, Bombay High Court, decided on 10 March 2026

Note: This article is intended for general legal information and academic discussion. It is not, and should not be treated as, legal advice on the facts of any particular case.

*Rahul Kumar Verma, Advocate, Delhi High Court