A/HRC/4/33/Add.2 Page 79 custody be produced before a “case-hearing authority” within a period of24 hours after such arrest, and that no person be detained beyond 24 hours except pursuant to the order of such authority. However, this provision does not apply to persons held in preventive detention. Similarly, Section 15 (2) of the State Cases Act requires that arrested persons be produced before the “appropriate authority” within 24 hours, and prohibits any person from being held for a longer period without orders of such authority. In practice, detainees in police custody are often held beyond the stipulated 24 hours without appearing before the relevant authority. Some of the cases were juveniles, the most recent being a 16-year-old held for three weeks in police custody in Ramechap in October to November 2006. 427. Cases have been documented of individuals held in the custody of national park wardens in national parks for long periods, primarily on charges of illegal poaching. According to the law, park authorities may detain individuals in park detention facilities for up to 25 days, and can also pass sentences of up to 15 years Several cases of ill-treatment and torture, and at least two deaths in the custody of national park wardens in Chitwan Park in 2006 have been alleged. 428. The Public Security Act (PSA) allows the authorities to order preventive detention for up to 12 months. It was extensively used between January and April 2006 to hold political and civil society activists who tried to exercise their right to freedom of assembly during protests. Most were held for up to three months, but five remained in police custody for five months. Those held under PSA were generally not ill-treated in police custody, although conditions of detention were sometimes overcrowded and there were some delays in medical treatment. Some were beaten or ill-treated during arrest. PSA has only been used on one occasion under the new government, in early May 2006, to detain briefly three ex-government officials. 429. Recommendation (e) stated: The maintenance of custody registers be scrupulously ensured, including recording of the time and place of arrest, the identity of the personnel, the actual place of detention, the state of health upon arrival of the person at the detention centre, the time family and a lawyer were contacted and visited the detainee, and information on compulsory medical examinations upon being brought to a detention centre and upon transfer; 430. According to information received from NGOs and other sources, custody registers are not systematically maintained either in police stations or in prisons, although how well registers are maintained varies from police station to police station, and from prison to prison. Although police authorities state that there is a standardized register, some police stations use ad hoc registers and notebooks. In particular, in some police stations, the arrest of those who are eventually released rather than appear before a judge are often not entered into the formal detention register. There are cases of juveniles held in police custody but who are not registered as such or given special treatment. Prior to April 2006, a number of cases have been documented where the arrest date of individuals who had been initially detained by the NA and subsequently transferred to police custody was noted as the date the person appeared in police custody and not the correct date of arrest. In a few cases, such detainees are alleged to have been initially hidden from representatives of organizations who have tried to visit them in police stations.