Furnishing substance of "reasons to believe" to an arrestee satisfies the statutory mandate of Section 69, CGST Act.

The petitioner was arrested on 19.03.2026 by the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) for allegedly operating a fake invoicing racket involving fraudulent Input Tax Credit (ITC) of approximately ₹14.01 crores through entities like M/s AAI Metalics and M/s Shakti International.

The Additional Director General (ADG) recorded "reasons to believe" for the arrest via e-office notings (Note #111) and authorized an Intelligence Officer to effect the arrest.

The petitioner was served with "grounds of arrest" and a copy of the "reasons to believe," which he acknowledged in writing.

On 20.03.2026, the Chief Judicial Magistrate remanded the petitioner to judicial custody.

The petitioner filed this Habeas Corpus writ challenging the arrest as illegal, primarily on the ground that he was not supplied with a verbatim, signed copy of the reasons recorded by the Commissioner/ADG.

Section 69 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, which mandates that the Commissioner must have "reasons to believe" a person committed specified offences before authorizing an arrest.

V. Senthil Balaji v. State, holding that while judicial remand usually bars Habeas Corpus, an exception exists if mandatory statutory provisions are ignored.

Principles from Arvind Kejriwal v. Directorate of Enforcement and Radhika Agarwal v. Union of India, which establish that "reasons to believe" must be furnished to the arrestee to enable a legal challenge to the arrest, as part of the safeguards for personal liberty under Article 21.

The court first affirmed that the petition was maintainable because it alleged a violation of a specific statutory mandate (Section 69), despite the existence of a remand order.

On the merits, the court conducted an in camera review of the respondent’s e-office notings and found that the ADG (acting as Commissioner) had indeed recorded detailed "reasons to believe" at Note #111 based on investigative material.

The court compared these internal notings with the document actually served on the petitioner at the time of arrest and concluded that the two were "in substance the same" and not at variance.

The court reasoned that neither the CGST Act nor Supreme Court precedents prescribe a specific "form or manner" for the supply of reasons; the core requirement is that the arrestee receives the substance of the reasons to facilitate a judicial challenge.

Consequently, the lack of a manual signature by the ADG on the specific physical copy given to the petitioner did not constitute a jurisdictional error.

The court answered the issues by stating that while a Habeas Corpus petition is maintainable for statutory non-compliance, no such non-compliance occurred here; the petition was dismissed and the Rule was discharged.