Human Rights of Arrested Person in Ancient India: An Appraisal

Abstract

The criminal administration of justice is one of the important components of the State. It has the dual responsibility of protection as well as detection of crime in society. The criminal administration of justice in India assumes that the State as a prosecution using its investigating resources and employing competent prosecutors will try its best to prove the case while on the other hand accused will hire the equally competent services of a counsel to defend himself and challenge the accusations leveled against him. While implementing the criminal law, one thing which is very important, is to make a balance between the society on one hand and individual liberty on the other. Therefore an individual require personal liberty and social security both as fundamental guarantee and need respectively. One of the processes that impose a major threat to the liberty of the individual is that of arrest. .Arrest involves restriction of liberty of a person arrested and therefore, infringes the basic human rights of liberty. Nevertheless the Constitution of India as well as International human rights law recognizes the power of the State to arrest any person as a part of its primary role of maintaining law and order. The practice prevailed in Ancient times as well. Humanity requires a just, fair and reasonable procedure with all human beings, be it an arrested person or others. Hence, present paper is an attempt to study that whether arrested person had any rights in ancient India or not?