An officer held me for a day with no legal ground — is that already arbitrary detention?

Duration grades the penalty; it does not create the offence

The opening words carry the elements: any public officer or employee who, without legal grounds, detains a person. Everything after that is a scale. The article separates detention not exceeding three days, more than three but not more than fifteen, more than fifteen days but not more than six months, and beyond six months, and attaches a heavier penalty to each. A day of detention therefore sits in the first band rather than outside the article. The common assumption that a short hold is too brief to count mistakes a rule about penalties for a rule about liability.

What the Code accepts as a legal ground

The provision does not leave the phrase at large. It states that the commission of a crime, or violent insanity or any other ailment requiring the compulsory confinement of the patient in a hospital, shall be considered legal grounds for the detention of any person. So the question in a real case is usually not whether you were held, which is rarely disputed, but whether a ground of that kind existed at the time. An officer's belief, a suspicion formed afterwards, or a reason supplied once a complaint is made is not the same thing as a ground that existed when the detention began.

A different provision covers the officer who had a ground

Not every complaint about being held belongs to this article. Where an officer did have lawful cause to arrest but then kept the person beyond the periods the Code allows before delivering him to the proper judicial authorities, that is a separate offence with its own elements and its own hours. The distinction matters because the two are proved differently: one turns on whether any ground existed at all, the other on the clock running from the moment of detention. Which of them fits depends on facts you may only be able to establish from records.

The record is made in the first days or not at all

Write down, while it is fresh, the exact time you were taken and released, where you were held, the names or units of the officers involved, what if anything you were told, and who saw any part of it. Ask for copies of any entry made about you, and have any injuries examined and documented at once. If you were released without anything being filed, that does not close the matter. Take what you have to a lawyer before confronting anyone, because a complaint against an officer stands or falls on the contemporaneous record.

Related provisions

• Revised Penal Code, Article 124 — Arbitrary Detention By Officers
• Revised Penal Code, Article 126 — Delaying Release Of A Prisoner