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The State of Andhra Pradesh v. Suda Suresh Veera Venkata Naga Raju

Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 744Decided 27 Jul 2026
Criminal Appeal (arising out of SLP(Crl.) No. 12344 of 2026), Diary No. 40501/2026
Justice Vikram Nath · Justice Sandeep Mehta

Background

The respondent, a Police Inspector, was accused in connection with the custodial death of a man apprehended by a Task Force and later handed to police custody, after which he was never produced before a Magistrate and was seen with injuries before going missing; his body remains untraced. A Special Investigation Team (SIT) arrested the inspector and sought twelve days' police custody to trace the body, recover evidence and identify co-accused. The Magistrate granted eight days' custody but attached strict conditions, confining interrogation entirely to the Central Prison at Rajamahendravaram, mandating continuous videography of every movement including transit, and regulating advocate presence: some of which the High Court modified but largely retained. The State appealed, arguing these conditions made effective investigation practically impossible.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court agreed the conditions were unworkable. It held that confining interrogation solely to a prison 160 km from the crime scene defeated the purpose of custodial interrogation, especially since the SIT needed to take the accused to the actual scene for recoveries and reconstruction. The Court found an absolute, non-extendable custody cut-off inconsistent with Section 187(2)-(3) BNSS, which allows police custody to be sought in instalments within the first 40-60 days of detention. It clarified that Section 38 BNSS guarantees an accused the right to meet an advocate "during" interrogation, not to have the advocate continuously present throughout every session, and that videography must cover actual interrogation sessions and recoveries but need not extend to filming ordinary transit. It allowed the appeal, granting a fresh seven-day custody period (keeping the total remand within the fifteen-day statutory cap) with modified, workable safeguards, while retaining protections against coercion or third-degree methods and joint accountability of officers for the accused's safety.

Lesson Learnt

Courts must balance an accused's constitutional safeguards during police custody with the practical needs of a genuine investigation: safeguards like videography and legal access cannot be turned into conditions so rigid that they make effective interrogation, recovery of evidence, or crime-scene reconstruction impossible.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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