Section 28 of the Mental Health Act

Detention of alleged mentally ill person pending report by medical officer

  1. When any person alleged to be a mentally ill person appears or is brought before a Magistrate under Sec. 23 or Sec. 25, the Magistrate may, by order in writing, authorise the detention of the alleged mentally ill person under proper medical custody in an observation ward of a general hospital or general nursing home or psychiatric hospital of psychiatric nursing home or in any other suitable place for such period not exceeding ten days as the Magistrate may consider necessary for enabling any medical officer to determine whether a medical certificate in respect of that alleged mentally ill person may properly be given under Cl. (a) of sub-section (2) of Sec.24.

  2. The Magistrate may, from time to time, for the purpose mentioned in sub-section (1), by order in writing, authorise such further detention of the alleged mentally ill person for periods not exceeding 10 day at a time as he may deem necessary:

Provided that no person shall be authorised to be detained under this sub-section for a continuous period exceeding thirty days in the aggregate.

COMMENT

This section provides for detention of the alleged mentally ill person under proper medical custody pending receipt of medical report. The period of such detention should not exceed a period of ten days at a time and thirty days in the aggregate.

SCOPE OF THE SECTION

The provision which the Magistrate could probably have thought of to justify his action is Sec. 16 of the Lunacy Act (since repealed by this Act). No other provision gives him the power of detention before adjudging a person as lunatic. Section 16(1) confers jurisdiction on a Magistrate to deal with a person who is alleged to be lunatic when he is brought before the Magistrate under the provisions of Sec. 13 of Sec.15. Such a person can be detained by an order of the Magistrate, "for such time not exceeding 10 days as may be, in his opinion necessary to enable the medical officer to determine whether such alleged lunatic is a person in respect of whom a medical certificate may be properly given". The proviso to sub-section (2) imposes a ban on the Magistrate against extension of the period of detention beyond a total period of 30 days1.