Section 76

Police work often requires flexibility — the officer originally named in a warrant may be busy, on leave, transferred, or unavailable when the warrant needs urgent execution. This provision (carried forward from Section 74 of the old Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973) lets the responsible officer delegate execution to a trusted colleague by simply writing that colleague's name on the warrant, avoiding delays in law enforcement while keeping a clear paper trail of who is authorized to act.

Courts have generally treated endorsement as a practical administrative step rather than a rigid formality, holding that as long as the endorsement is genuine and traceable to the officer to whom the warrant was originally directed, execution by the endorsed officer is valid. Judges have cautioned against treating minor procedural lapses in endorsement as automatically invalidating an arrest, focusing instead on whether the substance of the authorization was met.

• Myth: Only the exact officer named in the warrant can arrest the person.
  Fact: The law allows another officer to execute the warrant too, as long as their name is properly endorsed (written) on it by the officer originally named or by someone else authorized to endorse it.
• Myth: Endorsement requires a new warrant to be issued.
  Fact: No new warrant is needed — the original warrant remains valid; only the endorsed officer's name is added to it.