Habeas corpus.
The literal meaning of habeas corpus is "You shall have
the body"—that is, the judge must have the person
charged with a crime brought into the courtroom to hear
what he is been charged with. Through much of human
history, and in many countries still today, a person may
be imprisoned on the orders of someone in the
government and kept behind bars for years without ever
getting a chance to defend himself, or even knowing
what he is done wrong. In England, the right to be
brought before a judge to hear the charges and answer
them was written into law over 300 years ago, and the
U.S. adopted the British practice in its Constitution.
Explanation
The writ of Habeas Corpus is issued by a court or judge
directing one (a public official) who holds an imprisoned
person in custody, to produce the person before the court
for some specified purpose. The procedure provides a
means for inmates, or others acting on their behalf, to
dispute the legal basis for confinement.
A writ of habeas corpus is not in itself a remedy, but
instead, a legal procedure used as a protection against
arbitrary detention. A person shall seek for this writ from
a court to obtain immediate release from unlawful
confinement, as when the confinement has occurred
through a means that violated the person’s constitutional
rights. The characteristic element of the writ and the
theory behind the whole procedure observed by the court
was the immediate determination of the right of the
applicant’s freedom and his release when the detention is
found to be unlawful.
Case Laws
In Mahesh Chand Vs. the State of Rajasthan, the Supreme
Court held that the law is now well settled that if the
detention is illegal, the remedy is not the bail but a
petition for Habeas Corpus.
In Dr. M.C. Sharma, Lecturer vs. The Punjab University,
The Punjab and Haryana High Court held that Article
226 of the Constitution of India confers power upon the
High Court to issue to any person or authority including
in appropriate cases any Government, orders or writs
including the writs in the nature of Habeas Corpus,
mandamus, Prohibition, quo-warranto and certiorari or
any one of them for the enforcement of any of the rights
conferred by Part III or for any other purpose.
In Kanu Sanyal vs. District Magistrate,
The Supreme Court held that the habeas corpus was
essentially a procedural writ dealing with the machinery
of justice. The object underlying the writ was to secure
the release of a person who is illegally deprived of his
liberty. The writ declared the court is a command
addressed to the person who is alleged to have another
person unlawfully in his custody, requiring him to bring
the body of such person before the court in order that the
circumstances of the detention maybe enquired into and
an appropriate judgment rendered upon a judicial inquiry
into the alleged unlawful restraint.
The scope of the writ of habeas corpus has considerably
increased by virtue of the decision of the Supreme Court
in Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India,
and also by the adoption of the forty-fourth amendment
to the Constitution. Since the judicial interpretation
of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution has extended the
magnitude of the concept of the personal liberty and the
Court introduced the element -of fairness and justness in
the ‘procedure established by law’, now a writ of habeas
corpus would lie if the law depriving a person of his
personal liberty is not fair, just and equitable.
