On October 13, the Delhi Police had detained Cockroach Janta Party Co-Convenors Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das for staging a symbolic protest with the national flag in Central Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, the day after it was denotified as a protest site.
The two have since then been in Tihar Jail because an executive magistrate found them to be in breach of their peace bonds. They had signed these bonds after the police detained them at Delhi airport ahead of their protest against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on October 10.
Section 126 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita empowers executive magistrates to ask suspects to sign such bonds. Executive magistrates are usually police officers appointed by state governments to decide cases of preventive arrest.
However, lawyers and activists have long complained that the police misuse this provision to appropriate powers that are otherwise vested solely in the judiciary. In 2018, Justice S Muralidhar pulled up the government of Delhi for using the provision to illegally arrest a resident named Narender and send him to judicial custody.
In his judgement, the judge said that such officers could send suspects to custody for no more than seven days. In addition to that, he had categorically mentioned that police...