Legal Provisions of Section 51 of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (Cr.P.C.), India.
Search of Arrested Person:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
This section deals with the search of an arrested person and not the search of a place which is dealt with in Section 100 of the Code.
The search of an arrested person without communicating him the grounds of his arrest will be illegal. The officer making a search should obtain independent and respectable witnesses. The section does not require that the signature of the person searched shall be taken on the recovery memo but it does require to give a receipt in respect of articles seized from the arrested person as a measure of precaution.
A recovery memo not signed by the arrested person (i.e. accused, shall not render the search illegal solely on that ground. Though it is desirable to seal the recovered articles at the spot in order to avoid any dispute about their identity but it is not obligatory where there is no question about the identity of the recovered articles.
Sub-section (2) requires that the person of a woman can be searched only by a female with strict regard to decency and this cannot be done in the presence of men. But, simply because there was some irregularity in making such search, that itself will not render the search-evidence inadmissible.
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