BNSS Section 36: Procedure of Arrest and Duties of the Arresting Officer (CrPC 41B Mapping) (2026)

Explainer · Criminal Procedure · BNSS

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

Section 36 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) sets out what a police officer must do when making an arrest. The officer must wear clear identification, prepare a memorandum of arrest, and tell the arrested person of the right to have a relative or friend informed. It replaced Section 41B of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) when the new code came into force on 1 July 2024. This explainer sets out the duties, how the section maps to the old law, and why the "designated police officer" is a separate provision. Last verified October 2026.

01Why the heading can mislead

The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS) replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC) on 1 July 2024. The arrest provisions were renumbered, and the duties of the arresting officer and the "designated police officer" now sit in two different sections.

Section 36 of the BNSS is about the duties of the officer who makes the arrest. The designated police officer, who keeps and displays records of arrests, is dealt with in the next section, Section 37. If you reach Section 36 looking for the designated officer, you need Section 37.

02What Section 36 requires

Section 36 of the BNSS lays down how an arrest must be carried out and what the arresting officer must do. It builds in safeguards that the Supreme Court developed in its arrest-procedure case law and that the CrPC later wrote into Section 41B.

The section is a procedural protection. It does not create an offence. It makes sure an arrest is visible, recorded, and known to the people who care about the arrested person.

Section 36 turns an arrest from a private act into a recorded one: a named officer, a witnessed memo, and a family that is told.

03The three core duties

Section 36 places three core duties on the officer making the arrest:

• Clear identification: the officer must bear an accurate, visible and clear identification of their name that makes identification easy.
• Memorandum of arrest: the officer must prepare a memorandum of arrest that is attested by at least one witness, who may be a family member of the arrested person or a respectable member of the locality, and is countersigned by the arrested person.
• Right to inform someone: the officer must tell the arrested person, unless the memorandum is attested by a family member, that they have a right to have a relative or a friend named by them informed of the arrest.

04Old to new: CrPC 41B to BNSS 36

Section 36 of the BNSS carries forward Section 41B of the CrPC. The duties are the same.

So the officer-duties provision maps cleanly from Section 41B of the CrPC to Section 36 of the BNSS. The old numbers you may remember have simply moved.

05Section 36 and the designated officer in Section 37

It is easy to mix up Section 36 with the designated police officer, so it helps to keep them apart. Section 37 of the BNSS (old Section 41C of the CrPC) requires the State to set up a police control room in each district, and to designate an officer, of at least Assistant Sub-Inspector rank, to maintain and display the names and addresses of people arrested and the offences charged. The BNSS adds that this information should also be displayed digitally.

So Section 36 is about the officer making the arrest, and Section 37 is about the officer who keeps the arrest records. Both protect the arrested person, but they are separate duties.

06What this means in practice

In practice, a breach of Section 36 is a strong point for the defence. Courts take arrest safeguards seriously, and a missing name tag, an unwitnessed memo, or a failure to inform a relative can weaken the prosecution and support a bail or illegality argument.

Because the text follows Section 41B of the CrPC, older judgments on arrest procedure and on Section 41B still guide how Section 36 is read. Read it together with the duty to inform a relative or friend about the arrest, which sits in Section 48 of the BNSS and carries forward the old Section 50A.

07Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

Arrest-procedure points are argued in bail and quashing matters every day, and they stand or fall on how courts read the safeguards. Claw lets you search its 30 crore+ judgments and follow the cases, orders and hearings on an arrest-duty question across 9,102 courts, benches and forums, with each search answered in under 5 seconds. You can see how a High Court treated the arresting-officer duties under Section 36 or the old Section 41B, or follow a live matter by party or advocate name.

Claw does not use customer case documents to train its AI models, so what you look up stays private. Open a free Claw account to study how the arrest safeguards have been applied, or to track a bail or quashing matter as it moves. To search the wider body of law, see case search across Indian courts.

08Sources and further reading

• India Code (official text of the BNSS, 2023): indiacode.nic.in
• PRS Legislative Research (BNSS and CrPC comparison): prsindia.org
• Ministry of Home Affairs (new criminal laws): mha.gov.in
• Claw: clawlaw.in

This explainer is general information, not legal advice. The law changes through amendments and judgments, so check the current text and take advice from counsel before you act.

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