Mr. President, Sir, the article placed before us by Dr. Ambedkar deals with two matters, the conversion of the ordinary rights enjoyed by accused persons under the Criminal Procedure Code into constitutional guarantees and the manner in which persons detained under preventive detention laws should be dealt with. So far as the first question is concerned, it has been so fully dealt with that I do not want to deal with it except to say that I agree with the proposal of Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava that if an accused person is allowed to be detained for more than 24 hours by the Magistrate, he should record his reasons for doing so in writing that the accused person should have the right of examining the prosecution witnesses and of producing his defence and that at least one appeal should be allowed against every conviction. It is true, Sir, that most of these rights are enjoyed under the present Criminal law by accused persons, but if any of the rights now enjoyed is to become a constitutional right, it is desirable that the Constitution should contain the most important of those rights without which there cannot be a fair trial.
