Pursuit of Offenders into Other Jurisdictions | BNSS 2023

Pursuit of Offenders into Other Jurisdictions under Section 45 BNSS: Hot Pursuit, Execution of Warrants Outside the Jurisdiction, and Sections 79 to 83

Local limits exist for the orderly distribution of work among police stations and courts. They do not exist to give an offender a refuge. A person who commits an offence in one district and walks into the next has not put himself beyond the reach of the officer pursuing him, and a warrant issued by a court in one State does not become unenforceable because the person named in it has moved to another. The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 deals with the problem in two entirely different ways, and the distinction between them is the subject of this topic.

Where the officer is acting without a warrant, section 45 permits him to pursue the person into any place in India. Where he is acting under a warrant, a different and more elaborate scheme applies, in sections 79 to 83, which requires the warrant to be endorsed by the local authority and requires the person arrested to be taken before that authority before he is removed.

Figure 1: The four routes to an arrest beyond the local limits

1. Section 45: Hot Pursuit

Section 45, BNSS 2023

A police officer may, for the purpose of arresting without warrant any person whom he is authorised to arrest, pursue such person into any place in India.

The section is a single sentence and corresponds to section 48 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, which it reproduces without change. Four things follow from its terms.

The power is incidental to the power of arrest. It applies only where the officer is authorised to arrest without a warrant, which means that the case must fall within section 35(1) or another provision conferring the power. The section confers no new power to arrest; it removes a territorial obstacle to a power that already exists.
The territorial reach is the whole of India. The words are “any place in India”, so the pursuit may cross the limits of a police station, a district or a State.
No warrant, no permission and no endorsement is required by the section. Unlike the warrant provisions, section 45 does not require the officer to obtain the concurrence of the local police or of any Magistrate before making the arrest.
The section speaks of pursuit. It contemplates the officer following the person, which is what distinguishes it from an officer travelling to another State to arrest a person who is living there. The distinction is examined below.

⚠ What section 45 does not say, and what practice supplies

The section says nothing about intimating the local police. In practice, standing orders in every State require an officer proceeding outside his jurisdiction to inform the police station within whose limits he intends to act, and to seek its assistance; and the Supreme Court has in several matters deprecated arrests made in another State without any intimation to the local police.

The reason is practical rather than jurisdictional. An arrest by officers unknown to the locality, without the local police being aware of it, is indistinguishable from an abduction, and has on occasion been resisted as one. The requirement of intimation protects the officer as much as the person arrested.

The omission to intimate does not make the arrest itself without jurisdiction, because section 45 confers the power in terms. It is a breach of departmental instructions, and it is a circumstance a court will weigh in assessing what happened.

1.1 Pursuit and the officer who travels

A distinction is sometimes drawn between the officer who pursues a fleeing person across a boundary in the course of a continuing chase, which is the situation the section most obviously describes, and the officer who travels to another district or State days later to arrest a person who is residing there. The better view is that section 45 covers both, because the words are not confined to a continuous chase and because the power is expressed as being “for the purpose of arresting” a person the officer is authorised to arrest.

What changes between the two is not the existence of the power but the practical expectation. In a continuing pursuit there is no opportunity to intimate the local police; where the officer travels, there is, and the failure to do so is correspondingly harder to justify. Section 30, under which a superior officer may exercise the powers of an officer in charge of a police station throughout the local area to which he is appointed, is a related provision and is dealt with in the topic on Chapter IV.

2. Execution of a Warrant Outside the Jurisdiction

Where the arrest is under a warrant, the position is regulated in detail, and the scheme is one of endorsement and production before a local authority.

Provision	Content
Section 79	A warrant of arrest may be executed at any place in India
Section 80	When a warrant is to be executed outside the local jurisdiction of the court issuing it, that court may, instead of directing it to a police officer within its jurisdiction, forward it by post or otherwise to any Executive Magistrate, District Superintendent of Police or Commissioner of Police within whose jurisdiction it is to be executed; that officer endorses his name on it and, if practicable, causes it to be executed
Section 81	Where a warrant directed to a police officer is to be executed beyond the local jurisdiction of the issuing court, he shall ordinarily take it for endorsement to an Executive Magistrate, or to a police officer not below the rank of an officer in charge of a police station, within the local limits of whose jurisdiction it is to be executed. Such endorsement is sufficient authority to the officer to execute it, and the local police shall, if required, assist. Where delay occasioned by obtaining the endorsement would prevent the execution, the officer may execute it without endorsement in any place beyond the local jurisdiction of the issuing court
Section 82	When a warrant is executed outside the district in which the court issuing it is situate, the person arrested shall, unless the court is within thirty kilometres of the place of arrest, or is nearer than the Executive Magistrate or District Superintendent or Commissioner within whose jurisdiction the arrest was made, or unless security is taken under section 78, be taken before such Magistrate or officer
Section 83	That Magistrate or officer shall, if the person arrested appears to be the person intended, direct his removal in custody to the court that issued the warrant; and where the offence is bailable and the person is ready to give bail, or a direction under section 78 has been endorsed, he shall take the bail or security and forward the bond to the issuing court

The object of sections 82 and 83 is not to obstruct the execution of the warrant but to interpose a check. A person arrested far from the court that issued the warrant is taken before a local authority, which satisfies itself that he is the person intended before he is removed, and which may take bail where the offence is bailable. The check exists because the principal risk in executing a warrant at a distance is that the wrong person is taken, and because removal in custody over a long distance is itself a serious deprivation.

⚠ The exception in section 81 and when it applies

Section 81 permits execution without endorsement where the delay occasioned by obtaining it would prevent the execution of the warrant. The exception is narrow, and the test is not convenience but prevention: the officer must be in a position to say that had he sought the endorsement, the person would have escaped.

Even where the exception applies, section 82 still operates. The person arrested must still be taken before the local Executive Magistrate, District Superintendent or Commissioner unless the issuing court is nearer, or within thirty kilometres, or security has been taken. Dispensing with the endorsement does not dispense with the production.

3. Territorial Jurisdiction and Investigation

The power to arrest across a boundary raises a related question: which police station may investigate, and what happens if the wrong one does? The answer is that the Sanhita treats territorial jurisdiction in investigation as a matter of internal arrangement rather than as a condition of validity.

📖 Naresh Kavarchand Khatri v. State of Gujarat, (2008) 8 SCC 300

Facts: A first information report was registered at a police station, and it was contended that the offence had not been committed within the local limits of that station, so that the officer had no jurisdiction to register the case or to investigate it, and that the proceedings were therefore void.

Held: The Supreme Court held that the question of territorial jurisdiction of a police station to register and investigate is not one that goes to the root of the matter at the stage of registration. The provisions of the Code dealing with the place of inquiry and trial are relevant to the trial and not to the investigation, and a police officer who receives information disclosing a cognizable offence is not to refuse to register it on the footing that the offence appears to have been committed elsewhere. Any question of jurisdiction is to be raised before the court concerned at the appropriate stage.

Ratio: Territorial jurisdiction in investigation is not a precondition of a valid registration or investigation. The place of inquiry and trial is a question for the court, raised at the proper stage.

📖 Rasiklal Dalpatram Thakkar v. State of Gujarat, (2010) 1 SCC 1

Facts: An investigation was conducted by a police station which, it was alleged, had no territorial jurisdiction over the offence, and the question was whether the investigation and everything that followed from it were vitiated on that ground, and whether the court could direct the transfer of the investigation to the police having jurisdiction.

Held: The Court held that an investigation conducted by an officer who was not empowered to do so is not to be called in question by reason of that fact, the Code expressly so providing, and that the proper course where a question of territorial jurisdiction arises is for the investigation to be transferred to the police station having jurisdiction rather than for everything done to be treated as a nullity. The Court also held that a Magistrate taking cognizance may direct the transfer of the case, and that the interests of justice are served by continuity rather than by starting afresh.

Ratio: A defect in the territorial competence of the investigating officer does not vitiate the investigation. The remedy is transfer, and the protection against calling proceedings in question on that ground is statutory.

The two decisions together explain why section 45 is drafted as briefly as it is. If an investigation is not vitiated by the territorial position of the officer conducting it, there is no reason to hedge the power of pursuit with conditions of endorsement and production. Those conditions exist in the warrant provisions because a warrant is a judicial order directed at a named person, and the risk it presents is the risk of the wrong person being removed in custody at a distance from the court that issued it.

4. Related Powers of Pursuit and Reach

Provision	Power	Territorial reach
Section 45	Pursuit of a person whom the officer is authorised to arrest without warrant	Any place in India
Section 61	Where a person in lawful custody escapes or is rescued, the person from whose custody he escaped may immediately pursue and arrest him; sections 44 and 45 apply as though the arrest were under a warrant	Any place in India
Section 79	Execution of a warrant of arrest	Any place in India, subject to sections 80 to 83
Section 30	A police officer superior in rank to an officer in charge of a police station may exercise the same powers as that officer	Throughout the local area to which he is appointed
Section 86	Identification, attachment and forfeiture of property of a proclaimed person situated outside India, through a request to a court or authority in a contracting State	Outside India, under the reciprocal arrangements in Chapter VIII
Section 208	An offence committed outside India by a citizen, or on a ship or aircraft registered in India, may be dealt with as if committed in India, with the previous sanction of the Central Government	Outside India
Sections 111 to 124	Reciprocal arrangements for assistance, including letters of request for investigation and the attachment and forfeiture of property, in relation to contracting States	Outside India

The pattern is that within India the Sanhita permits pursuit and execution everywhere, subject in the case of a warrant to a local check; and that beyond India it substitutes a system of request and reciprocity, since no Indian officer can exercise coercive power in the territory of another State. The boundary of the country is therefore the boundary of section 45, and Chapter VIII takes over beyond it.

5. Key Takeaways

The position stated shortly

1. Section 45 permits a police officer, for the purpose of arresting without warrant any person whom he is authorised to arrest, to pursue such person into any place in India.

2. The power is incidental to the power of arrest. It confers no new power to arrest and applies only where the case falls within section 35(1) or another provision conferring the power.

3. The section requires no warrant, no permission and no endorsement. Intimation to the local police is required by standing orders and by good practice, not by the section, and its omission does not deprive the officer of jurisdiction.

4. Where the arrest is under a warrant, a different scheme applies. Section 79 permits execution anywhere in India; section 80 permits the issuing court to forward the warrant to a local Executive Magistrate, District Superintendent or Commissioner for endorsement and execution.

5. Section 81 requires an officer executing a warrant outside the jurisdiction to ordinarily obtain an endorsement from a local Executive Magistrate or an officer not below the rank of an officer in charge of a police station, unless the delay would prevent execution.

6. Section 82 requires the person arrested to be taken before the local authority unless the issuing court is within thirty kilometres or nearer, or security has been taken; section 83 requires that authority to direct his removal in custody to the issuing court, or to take bail in a bailable offence.

7. Dispensing with the endorsement under section 81 does not dispense with the production under section 82.

8. Territorial jurisdiction is not a precondition of a valid registration or investigation; the question of the place of inquiry and trial is for the court at the appropriate stage: Naresh Kavarchand Khatri.

9. An investigation by an officer not territorially empowered is not to be called in question on that ground; the remedy is transfer, not nullity: Rasiklal Dalpatram Thakkar.

10. Section 61 applies the same power of pursuit to the retaking of a person who has escaped from lawful custody; beyond India, Chapter VIII and section 208 take over.

6. Frequently Asked Questions

Can a police officer arrest a person outside his own district?

Yes. Section 45 permits him, for the purpose of arresting without warrant a person whom he is authorised to arrest, to pursue that person into any place in India. The power is incidental to an existing power of arrest and is not confined to the officer’s own jurisdiction.

Does the officer need permission from the local police?

Not under section 45, which requires none. Standing orders in the States and good practice require intimation to and the assistance of the local police, and its omission is a departmental irregularity and a circumstance a court will weigh, but it does not deprive the officer of the power the section confers.

How is a warrant executed in another State?

Under section 79 a warrant may be executed at any place in India. Under section 80 the issuing court may forward it to a local Executive Magistrate, District Superintendent of Police or Commissioner for endorsement and execution; under section 81 an officer carrying it should ordinarily obtain an endorsement locally, unless the delay would prevent execution.

What must be done after arresting a person under a warrant outside the district?

Under section 82 he must be taken before the Executive Magistrate, District Superintendent or Commissioner within whose jurisdiction the arrest was made, unless the issuing court is within thirty kilometres or nearer than that authority, or security has been taken. Under section 83 that authority directs his removal in custody to the issuing court, or takes bail where the offence is bailable.

Is an investigation void if conducted by the wrong police station?

No. The Sanhita protects an investigation from being called in question on the ground that the officer was not empowered to investigate, and the remedy where a question of territorial jurisdiction arises is transfer to the police station having jurisdiction, not treating everything done as a nullity.

Can an Indian police officer pursue a person outside India?

No. Section 45 extends to any place in India. Beyond India the Sanhita substitutes a system of request and reciprocity: Chapter VIII provides for letters of request and for the attachment and forfeiture of property in contracting States, and section 208 permits an offence committed outside India to be dealt with in India with the previous sanction of the Central Government.

Related Topics

Arrest of Persons under the BNSS, 2023: Sections 35 to 62
Escape from Custody and Retaking under the BNSS, 2023
Processes to Compel Appearance: Chapter VI, BNSS
Police Powers and Public Assistance: Sections 30 to 34, BNSS
Jurisdiction of the Criminal Courts in Inquiries and Trials: Sections 197 to 209
Reciprocal Arrangements for Assistance: Chapter VIII, BNSS