Habeas corpus is the most potent safeguard of personal liberty in India. Examine its scope under Articles 32 and 226 in the light of recent protest-related detentions.

Habeas corpus means "you may have the body." It orders the State to produce a detained person and show a lawful basis for holding them. It is part of the Constitution through Articles 32 and 226 [2]. It turns the right to liberty under Art. 21 into a remedy a court can enforce. Recent protest detentions show both its strength and its gaps.

Scope under Article 32

• Art. 32 is itself a Fundamental Right. The Supreme Court (SC) can issue habeas corpus only to enforce Part III rights [2].
• Relaxed locus standi: a colleague can file as next friend. For example, a Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) coordinator moved the SC for founder Abhijeet Dipke and unidentified persons allegedly detained after a Delhi protest over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls [1].
• Urgency: courts list liberty cases out of turn. Here the petition sought a Sunday Special Bench hearing [1].

Scope under Article 226

• High Courts can issue writs for Fundamental Rights and "for any other purpose", so their power is wider [2].
• They are closer to the place of custody, which makes them faster for local detentions.

Why it is potent: the protest test

• It looks only at whether the custody is legal, not whether the protest was right.
• Art. 22(1) requires the grounds of arrest to be given and allows a lawyer of choice [2]. In Vihaan Kumar v. State of Haryana (2025), the SC held that telling the person the grounds is a mandatory constitutional requirement [3].
• D.K. Basu guidelines require an arrest memo, informing relatives and a control-room record of where each person is held [4]. The petition's request to disclose detainee identities targets this kind of "invisible detention" [1].

Limitations

• "Detention" versus "arrest": the protesters were described as "detained or restrained" [1]. Under that label, police may skip the arrest-memo safeguards [4].
• Infructuousness: if detainees are freed before the hearing, the plea can lapse with no ruling on legality, so the practice can repeat.
• Preventive detention under Art. 22(3)–(7) narrows court review mostly to procedure [2].
• Case backlogs dull the remedy in less visible cases.

Habeas corpus is strong because it asks one simple question: on what legal basis is this person held? To keep it strong, courts should decide disclosure requests even after release. Police should record every protest detention in a D.K. Basu-style register. Magistrates should strictly check Art. 22(1) compliance. This would keep the "protector and guarantor" role of the courts real, in line with the freedom of assembly under Art. 19 and liberty under Art. 21.