A bundle arrives, or is collected from a court, and it is treated as the moment everything was decided. People read the first pages, reach a word they do not like, and stop. It is not a verdict, and it is not evidence. A chargesheet is the report a police officer forwards to a Magistrate on completing an investigation — the prosecution putting its case on the record. Nothing in it has been tested. It becomes evidence only if a witness appears and is cross-examined on it. And you are entitled to the whole of it, before any charge is framed. Section 230 of the BNSS: the Magistrate shall, without delay and in no case beyond fourteen days from the date of production or appearance of the accused, furnish free of cost the police report, the first information report, the statements of every person the prosecution proposes to examine as a witness, any confession or statement recorded by a Magistrate, and the other documents sent with the report. Read that list again. The witness statements are in it. A great many people never learn that, and a great many pay somebody for a copy of papers the statute hands them for nothing. But the real point of this page is a division of labour, and it is the thing nobody explains. Your advocate reads the file for what the law makes of it. Only you can read it for whether it is true. No lawyer in the building can tell you whether the man named at serial seven was actually standing there, whether that date was possible, whether that signature is yours, or — hardest of all — what the file has left out. And there is a clock on it. Section 262(1): sixty days from the supply of copies to apply for discharge before a Magistrate. Section 250(1): sixty days from committal before a Court of Session. Two provisions, two different starting points, one easily missed deadline. Where we stop: we give no opinion on the strength of a case, on what a document proves, or on whether a charge will be framed — those are an advocate’s. We print no punishment ranges and no court fee. And we never contact anybody named in a file, because approaching a witness or a complainant in a pending matter is itself an offence.
What this guide covers
Begin with the belief that does the most damage, because almost everybody who receives one of these holds it.
The bundle arrives, a name appears on it under the word accused, and the matter feels concluded. People stop reading on page four. Families stop discussing it. The person named stops participating in his own case at precisely the moment he is most useful to it.
Nothing has been decided. A chargesheet is filed by a police officer, not by a judge, and the court has not yet applied its mind to whether a charge should even be framed. The document records what the prosecution asserts. Assertion is where a criminal case starts, not where it ends.
The second misunderstanding, and it is subtler than the first because the papers look so much like proof.
There are statements in it, signed, with names and dates. They read as established fact. They are not. A statement recorded by a police officer during investigation is material the prosecution proposes to lead; it becomes evidence only when that person comes to court, says it on oath, and is cross-examined on it.
Which has a practical consequence worth holding on to. Several of those people will be tested. Some accounts will change in the box. Some witnesses will not appear at all. The file is the prosecution’s intention, and intention and outcome are different things.
Stated accurately, because the accurate description is less frightening than the imagined one.
It is the report a police officer forwards to a Magistrate empowered to take cognizance, on completing an investigation. That is all. Its legal character is a report. The word chargesheet is what everybody calls it; the statute calls it a police report.
Knowing the statutory name is not pedantry. It is what you use when asking for anything connected with it, and it is why searching for the right provision takes a minute rather than an afternoon.
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The statute sets out what the report must contain, and reading that list tells you what to look for.
The names of the parties. The nature of the information. The names of the persons who appear to be acquainted with the circumstances of the case. Whether an offence appears to have been committed and, if so, by whom. Whether the accused has been arrested, released on a bond or bail bond, or forwarded in custody. Whether a medical examination report is attached, in the case of specified offences.
Each of those is a checkable item rather than an opinion. A report that omits one, or states one in a way that cannot be right, has a defect on its face — and a defect on the face of a document is the only kind a non-lawyer can reliably find.
One item on that list is recent, widely overlooked, and in a file involving a phone it is often the line that matters most.
Where an electronic device has been seized, the report must state the sequence of custody of that device.
A chain, in other words: who took it, who held it, who handed it to whom, and when. If a phone or a laptop matters to your case, that is the first thing to look for and the first thing to check for gaps, because a sequence with a hole in it is visible to anybody reading carefully.
And here the page deliberately parts company with how these documents are usually described.
A chargesheet is sometimes presented as the complete and closed case — everything the prosecution will ever have, fixed on the day it was filed. That is comforting and it is wrong.
The investigation does not shut when the report goes in. So the file in your hands is the prosecution’s case as at a date, not for all time, and anybody planning on the basis that nothing further can arrive is planning on a false premise.
The provision that keeps it open, with the limits the statute puts on it.
Section 193(9) preserves further investigation after a report has been forwarded, and requires a further report to be sent where further oral or documentary evidence is obtained. Its proviso adds that further investigation during a trial requires the permission of the trial court and must be completed within ninety days, extendable by the court.
Read both halves. It is open — but once a trial is running it is not open at will; it needs leave, and it is time-bound. That is a meaningful protection and it is worth knowing it exists.
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If this first part reduced to a sentence, it would be this one.
A chargesheet is a police officer’s report of what an investigation produced, filed before a Magistrate, consisting of material the prosecution intends to prove, open to being added to, and decided by nobody yet.
Which is exactly why the next part matters. A document of that kind is not something to be afraid of reading. It is something that has to be read, carefully, by the one person whose name is on it — and the law is unusually generous about making sure they can.
This is the most practically valuable thing on this page, and it is widely unknown.
You do not have to apply on special grounds. You do not have to persuade anybody. You do not have to pay. The whole of the prosecution’s material goes to you as a matter of statutory obligation, before any charge is framed.
And the obligation is on the court rather than on you. That reversal is the point: it is not a request you make and hope for, it is something the Magistrate is required to do.
The words themselves, because the strength of the entitlement is in them.
In any case where the proceeding has been instituted on a police report, the Magistrate shall without delay, and in no case beyond fourteen days from the date of production or appearance of the accused, furnish to the accused and the victim, if represented by an advocate, free of cost, a copy of each of the documents the section lists.
Four things in one sentence. Shall. Without delay. In no case beyond fourteen days. Free of cost. There is very little room in that for discretion, and none at all for a charge.
Worth isolating because of the way this is experienced in practice.
People wait. They are told the copies will come. They attend dates and are told the file is not ready. And because nobody has told them there is an outer limit, they treat the delay as the normal pace of things.
There is an outer limit, and it runs from the production or appearance of the accused. If that period has gone by without supply, that is a thing to be raised in the court holding the file, by an advocate on record, in a line — not a thing to be endured.
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Said bluntly because of what happens around court complexes.
People pay for copies of their own chargesheet. Not court fee — money to somebody who offers to get the papers. It happens constantly and it happens to exactly the people who can least afford it.
The section says free of cost. There is no reading of it on which a payment to anybody is required for the supply the Magistrate is obliged to make. If somebody is asking for money to hand you your own file, the answer is to ask in court instead.
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Listed exactly, because this is the list to hold the bundle against.
One: the police report. Two: the first information report. Three: the statements of all persons whom the prosecution proposes to examine as its witnesses. Four: the confessions and statements, if any, recorded by a Magistrate. Five: any other document, or relevant extract, forwarded to the Magistrate with the police report.
Run your own bundle against those five heads. Most incomplete sets are discovered this way and in about twenty minutes, and the discovery is worth considerably more than any reading of the parts you do have.
Item three is set out separately here, because of everything in section 230 it is what surprises people most.
You get the statements of every person the prosecution proposes to examine. Not a summary. Not a list of names. The statements.
That is the prosecution telling you, in advance and in writing, what each of its witnesses is expected to say. It is the most valuable part of the file by a wide margin, and it is the part that gets read least because it is the longest and the most repetitive.
One limit on the supply, and it is narrower than people assume when they hear about it.
A police officer may request that a particular portion of a witness statement be excluded, and section 230 excludes that requested portion from what is furnished. So a redaction is possible.
But note what it is not. It is not a power to withhold a whole statement, or a category of statements, or the file. It is a request about a portion, made by an officer, for reasons he has to give.
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And the proviso that keeps that limit honest.
The Magistrate may, after perusing the excluded part and considering the reasons given by the police officer for the request, direct that a copy of that part, or of such portion of it as the Magistrate thinks proper, be furnished to the accused.
So the exclusion is provisional and reviewable, by a judicial officer who reads the material itself. Which means an excluded portion is something to ask the court about rather than something to accept as settled.
Two more provisos, both of which matter in practice far more than they sound.
Where the Magistrate is satisfied that a document is voluminous, copies may be furnished through electronic means, or the accused may be allowed only to inspect it, personally or through an advocate in court. And supply of documents in electronic form shall be considered as duly furnished.
Which answers a question we are asked constantly: yes, a pen drive or a link is valid supply. But it creates a practical duty on your side — get it printed, paginated and bound, and keep the electronic original exactly as received. A file nobody can turn the pages of does not get read, whatever the statute says about it.
Here is the idea this page exists for, and it is not a point of law at all.
A chargesheet has to be read twice, by two different people, for two different things. One of those readings is your advocate’s and cannot be done by you. The other is yours and cannot be done by your advocate, however good or however unhurried.
Almost nobody is told about the second reading. So it does not happen, and a file that could have been checked against the memory of the one person who was present goes to the charge stage checked only against the law.
Setting out the first reading properly, because it is skilled work and this page is not pretending otherwise.
Which offences are made out on the material as it stands. Whether the ingredients of each are alleged. Whether the statements support what the report concludes from them. Which documents are inadmissible or unproved. What to argue at the framing of charge, and what to put to each witness later.
That is advocacy, it requires years to do well, and nothing in the rest of this page is a substitute for it. A client who reads his own file and then argues law from it has misunderstood the division rather than mastered it.
And now the second reading, which is the one being asked for here.
Your advocate knows what the law makes of the file. He has no way of knowing whether the file is true. He was not at the place, he does not know the people, he cannot tell a real eyewitness from a name that was added, and he cannot miss a document he never knew existed.
You can. That is not a small contribution and it is not a consolation prize. On the facts of what happened, the accused is the best-informed person connected with the case, and the only one whose knowledge is not derived from the file itself.
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Start with the witness list, person by person, and ask the plainest possible question about each.
Do I know this person. Was this person there. Is this person a stranger to me, or the complainant’s neighbour, or somebody’s cousin, or a man who was never within half a kilometre of the place.
Three answers are worth writing down for every name: who they are, whether they were present, and how you know. Where somebody’s identity or address has to be established formally later, that is witness verification work and it belongs to a later stage — at this stage you are only recording what you know.
Then the chronology, which is where files most often contradict themselves.
Collect every date and time asserted anywhere in the bundle — in the report, in each statement, on each document — and put them in order. Then test them against what you were doing.
Two kinds of thing fall out of this, and both are findable by a non-lawyer. Internal contradictions, where two parts of the same file say different things about the same moment. And external impossibilities, where you can show you were elsewhere — a bill, a toll receipt, an attendance record, a call.
Geography next, and it is the most commonly wrong part of a hurried file.
Is the place described correctly. Is the layout right. Are the distances plausible. Could a person standing where a witness is said to have stood actually have seen what he is said to have seen.
Somebody who knows the street can answer all four in a minute. Somebody reading a description cannot answer any of them. We are not suggesting you go anywhere or photograph anything — simply that what you already know about the place belongs on the paper you give your advocate.
And the hardest reading of all, which is also the one most likely to matter.
A lawyer reading a file sees what is in it. An absence is invisible unless you knew to expect the thing that is missing.
So write down what you expected to find and did not. A person who was present and is not named anywhere. A document you know was handed over. A recording you know exists. A medical paper referred to in one statement and absent from the bundle. Each of those is a question somebody has to answer, and none of them can be asked by a reader who was not there.
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On method, because the method matters more than the effort.
The first pass is front to back, in the order the bundle came, without stopping to argue with it and without taking notes beyond page numbers. The aim is only to know what is in the file and roughly where.
It is a hard afternoon and people put it off for months. But a single ordered pass is what makes every later look-up fast, and nobody who has skipped it can find anything in a bundle afterwards.
The second pass is not a reading at all. It is four passes with one question each.
Once for names. Once for dates. Once for places. Once for absences. Each pass is quick because you are looking for one kind of thing, and each produces a short written list rather than an impression.
Four narrow passes beat one anxious reading every time, which is why a paginated and indexed bundle is worth the clerical cost — and why a legal file management arrangement earns its fee on exactly this kind of document.
And the form it should take, because the form decides whether it gets used.
Questions and facts, with page numbers. Not arguments, not conclusions, not what you think it proves. One line per item: the page, what the file says, and what you know.
Hand that to your advocate and you have given a busy person the one thing he cannot produce himself. In our experience it changes the pace of the engagement, because a file with a client’s factual schedule attached is a file somebody can work on in an evening.
Now the clock, and it starts on a date most people do not record.
The reading is not an open-ended exercise. From the supply of the copies, a period runs in which an application for discharge may be preferred — and discharge is decided on the file itself, before any evidence is led.
So write down the date the copies reached you, on the day they reach you. It is the date every later calculation runs from and it is routinely lost, which is a remarkable thing to lose given how easy it is to note.
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The provision for a warrant case before a Magistrate, in two parts.
Sub-section (1): the accused may prefer an application for discharge within a period of sixty days from the date of supply of copies of documents under section 230.
Sub-section (2): if, on considering the police report and the documents sent with it under section 193, and after such examination of the accused as the Magistrate thinks necessary, and after giving the prosecution and the accused an opportunity of being heard, the Magistrate considers the charge groundless, he shall discharge the accused and record his reasons.
Note the test: groundless. And note that the Magistrate must record reasons — a discharge is a reasoned order, not a dismissal in a line.
The corresponding provision before a Court of Session, with two differences that matter.
Sub-section (1): the accused may prefer an application for discharge within a period of sixty days from the date of commitment of the case under section 232.
Sub-section (2): if, on consideration of the record of the case and the documents submitted with it, and after hearing the submissions of the accused and the prosecution, the Judge considers that there is not sufficient ground for proceeding against the accused, he shall discharge the accused and record his reasons.
Different starting point, and a differently worded test — not sufficient ground for proceeding, rather than groundless. Whether those two tests differ in substance is an argument for counsel; that they differ in words is simply a fact about the statute.
Put side by side, because getting the wrong one is an easy and expensive error.
| Magistrate, warrant case | Court of Session | |
|---|---|---|
| Provision | Section 262 | Section 250 |
| Period | Sixty days | Sixty days |
| Runs from | Supply of copies under section 230 | Commitment of the case under section 232 |
| Test | Charge groundless | Not sufficient ground for proceeding |
| Reasons recorded | Yes | Yes |
Which court your matter is in therefore decides which date you should have written down — and it is worth asking your advocate that question in those words rather than assuming.
There is a drafting problem in the Sessions provision, and a court has said so plainly.
Section 250(1) counts from commitment. But a great many sessions-triable matters reach a special court without any commitment happening at all — cases under special statutes are instituted directly.
So for those cases the provision names a starting point that never occurs. That is not a theoretical difficulty; it affects a large category of serious matters, and until it is fixed it has to be worked around.
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The judgment that dealt with it, and what it actually decided.
In Sajith v. State of Kerala, decided on 3 September 2024, the Kerala High Court read the sixty-day period in section 250(1) as directory rather than mandatory. Its reasoning was textual: the sub-section says the accused may prefer an application and carries no relaxation proviso, whereas another provision in the same statute says shall and expressly allows the court to relax its period.
On the missing starting point, the court observed that in sessions and special court cases where there is no commitment, the sixty days may be counted from the supply of documents under section 230, following the approach of section 262(1), until the legislature amends the provision. It also directed that its order go to the Secretaries concerned so that the gap could be addressed.
And immediately the caution, because this is exactly the kind of holding that gets misused.
A period read as directory by one High Court is still a period. Another court may take a different view. And a delay explained by a judgment is still a delay that has to be explained.
So the sensible course is the unexciting one: treat the sixty days as real, get the reading done inside it, and let the directory point be something your counsel has in reserve rather than something your timetable depends on.
A distinction worth being clear about, since the two are used interchangeably in conversation.
A discharge happens before a charge is framed, on the material the prosecution has filed. An acquittal follows a trial, on evidence that has been led and tested.
Which is precisely why the reading of the file matters so much at this stage. At the discharge stage the file is the case — there is nothing else in front of the court. Whether to bring such an application at all is a question for counsel, and discharge application work is a separate engagement from the reading.
Where a discharge is refused, what follows is a challenge to that order rather than a second application — a revision petition is the usual shape of it, and it is counsel’s call entirely. And where the same incident has also produced a money claim, that runs separately on the civil side as a civil suit or, if you are the one being sued, a written statement; nothing in the criminal file decides it.
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A question we are asked constantly and will not answer with a rule, for a reason worth stating.
The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita came into force on 1 July 2024. Which code applies where an offence was committed before that date and the case was registered after it, or where the proceeding straddles it, is genuinely unsettled.
And it is not a small question for this page. The section numbers for supply and for discharge are not the same under the two codes, so a reader working from the wrong one is looking up the wrong provision and may be working to the wrong period.
Setting out the state of it rather than pretending to a settled answer.
The Madras High Court has held that the earlier law applies to offences committed before 1 July 2024, even where the case was registered after that date. The Punjab and Haryana High Court has referred to a larger bench the question whether every criminal application filed after that date is governed by the new Sanhita.
Two courts, two live positions, and a larger bench pending. That is the honest picture as it stands, and it will change.
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And the practical advice that replaces one, which is more useful than a confident sentence would be.
Take two dates to your advocate together: the date of the offence and the date of registration. Ask which code governs, in those words. A matter is answered on those two facts and not on a general proposition.
We would rather print the new provisions and tell you the question is open than print a rule that a larger bench may unsettle. A page that states the law confidently where the courts have not is not being helpful; it is transferring its own risk onto a reader.
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Turning to a provision that works in the other direction, for the person who made the complaint.
Section 193(3)(ii) requires the police officer to inform the informant or the victim of the progress of the investigation within ninety days, by any means including electronic communication. And sub-section (3)(iii) requires the action taken to be communicated to the person who first gave the information, in the manner prescribed by State rules.
Two separate obligations, both owed to the person who reported the offence rather than to the accused — and both expressed as duties on the officer rather than as something anybody has to apply for.
Which is worth one section on its own, because of how rarely it is invoked.
Complaints go quiet. People attend the station, are told the matter is under investigation, and have no sense of whether anything is happening. Almost none of them know there is a provision that requires them to be told.
Asking about it by name, in writing, costs nothing and changes the conversation. It is a statutory duty rather than a courtesy — our FIR guidance page covers the earlier stages, a complaint case is a different route altogether, and for an online offence the cyber crime complaint process runs alongside.
What follows carries more weight than any section number printed above it.
A person reads the file, sees a name he recognises, and concludes the whole thing rests on a misunderstanding that one conversation would clear up. The thought is natural, it is often sincere, and acting on it is the most destructive thing available. Nor is a legal notice the answer — a pending prosecution is not replied to by correspondence, and a notice sent to a complainant reads as pressure however carefully it is worded.
To approach a witness, a complainant or an investigating officer while a matter is pending is itself an offence. It is the fastest route to the cancellation of a bail already granted. And it converts one case that was defensible into two cases, one of which is about your conduct after you knew better.
Extended to the ways it actually happens, because people do not think of these as approaches.
Not in person. Not by telephone. Not through a cousin, a common friend, a village elder or a mediator. Not a message asking how they are. Not an apology. Not an offer. Not a request to find out what somebody is going to say in court.
The pressure to do it is heaviest in family matters, where relatives on both sides want the thing talked out, and it is in exactly those matters that it does the most harm. Our section 498A defence, anticipatory bail in a matrimonial case and dowry case guidance pages deal with that cluster; the rule on contact is the same there and applies to every family member, not only to the accused.
Where a matter is genuinely compoundable and a settlement is lawful, it is done on the record, through counsel, in court — a compounding or settlement petition exists precisely so that it does not have to be done in a corridor. Everything outside that route is risk with no corresponding benefit.
A related discipline that costs nothing and is routinely ignored.
The bundle is not for circulation. It contains the names, addresses and statements of other people, and in some categories of case the identity of a person the law protects from disclosure. It should not be photographed for a family group, posted, or sent to anybody who does not need it.
And nothing in it should be discussed in writing with anybody other than your advocate. A message explaining your view of a witness is a document, it exists after you have forgotten it, and it is read later in a far colder room than the one you wrote it in.
Closing this part with the whole of the method in one place, because it is short enough to carry.
Check the set against the five statutory heads. Note the date of supply. Paginate. One ordered pass front to back. Four narrow passes for names, dates, places and absences. One page of questions and facts, with page numbers. Hand it to counsel. Contact nobody.
That is eight steps, none of which requires a law degree and all of which require the one thing only the accused has. Done inside the sixty days, it is the most useful contribution a person can make to their own defence — and in a serious matter it is worth doing before a criminal appeal or a criminal revision is ever a subject of conversation.
Usually somebody holding a thick bundle they have been told is important and have not been able to get through.
An accused person who collected the papers from the court and has read the first four pages. A family member doing the reading because the person named is working, or frightened, or both. Occasionally a complainant who has obtained a copy and wants to understand what the police actually filed as against what they reported.
A fourth kind arrives with nothing: somebody who has been attending dates for months and has never been given a copy at all. That conversation is short and it is the most useful one we have — the entitlement exists, and it is asked for in the court that has the file.
Not the story. The bundle, and one date.
We ask what you were given, in what form, and on what date it reached you. Those three facts settle whether the set is complete, whether a clock has started, and whether anything is missing that has to be asked for before anything else is worth doing.
People want to begin by explaining what really happened, and that conversation has to wait. Not because it does not matter — it is the whole point — but because it is only useful once we both know exactly what the prosecution has put on the record, which is a question about paper.
Checked against the statute rather than against habit, because incomplete sets are common and go unnoticed.
The police report. The first information report. The statements of every person the prosecution proposes to examine. Any confession or statement recorded by a Magistrate. And the other documents forwarded with the report.
We compare what you have against that list and tell you what is absent. Where something is missing, the application for it is made in the court holding the file; where a certified copy of a particular document is needed separately, certified true copy work covers obtaining it.
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This is the bulk of what we actually do, and it is unglamorous and worth a great deal.
Every page numbered. A table of contents by document. A witness schedule — name, who they are said to be, which document they appear in, what they are said to say, and the page it is on. A date schedule, every date asserted anywhere in the file, in order. And a cross-reference from each allegation to the pages said to support it.
Not one step of that requires a law degree, and together they are what turns a bundle into something readable. A bundle nobody has indexed is read once, badly, by whoever is shortest of time. The same bundle indexed is a document two people can discuss.
Alongside the index, one short document, and it is written for you rather than for counsel.
A list of the specific factual questions the file raises that only you can answer. Who is the person named at this serial. Were you at this place on this date. Does this recovery match anything you remember. Is this signature yours. Is this number yours.
Questions, not conclusions. That list is the single most useful thing we produce, because it converts a bundle you could not face into twenty things you can actually answer — and your answers are what counsel needs and cannot generate.
Our own price list calls this analysis and opinion. Better to take that word apart here than to let a client pay for something we never supply.
Nothing we hand over says whether the case against you is a strong one, whether the evidence is sufficient, whether a charge will be framed, whether a discharge application should be made, or what any document proves. Those are legal opinions on contested facts and they belong to an advocate who will stand behind them.
What we do give an opinion on is narrow and real: whether the set you were supplied is complete, whether the index is internally consistent, whether dates conflict on their face, and whether any document referred to is absent from the bundle. That is a document opinion, not a legal one, and we will not let the word on a price list blur the difference.
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One line that applies to every file of this kind and admits no exception.
We do not contact anybody named in a chargesheet. Not a witness, not the complainant, not an investigating officer, not a doctor who signed a report. Not to verify a detail, not to ask a question, not through anybody else.
And we say the same to every client about themselves. Approaching a witness or a complainant in a pending matter is not a shortcut; it is its own offence, it is the fastest way to lose a bail that has already been granted, and it converts a defensible case into two cases. If a fact genuinely needs establishing, it is established through the court, by counsel, on the record.
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The handover point is clear on this work, clearer than on most of what we do.
Everything that follows from the reading is advocacy: whether to apply for discharge and on what ground, what to put to each witness, what to concede, what to argue at the framing of charge, whether to seek anything further from the prosecution.
Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it.
Before any of that, if what you want is simply to understand the position for half an hour, an online legal consultation or a video consultation is the right first spend, and a cheaper one than a misdirected engagement.
Four questions come with almost every file, and each gets the same answer.
Will I be discharged. Will the charge be framed. How long will the trial take. What are my chances. We do not know, we will not estimate, and the confidence of anybody who does answer those from a bundle should be treated as information about them rather than about your case.
What is knowable in advance is smaller and more useful: what the prosecution has put on the record, what is missing from it, and what the dates on your own papers require you to do next.
Nearly every file of this kind is worked on by two sets of hands, and it goes best where that is settled in week one instead of being discovered in month three.
Counsel says what the theory of the defence is and what they need found. We find it, index it, and produce it in a form that can be carried into a courtroom. Where counsel wants a particular schedule — contradictions between two statements, every reference to one date, every document bearing one signature — that is exactly the kind of thing the index exists to make possible.
The value shows up at one specific moment. A cross-examination in which the page can be produced in four seconds reads differently from one in which it cannot be found, and the difference was created months earlier by somebody doing clerical work properly.
A small practical section that saves a repeated problem.
Keep your supplied set untouched — unmarked, unannotated, in the order it came. Work on a second copy. Where the supply was electronic, get it printed and bound once rather than carrying a pen drive to hearings, and keep the electronic original exactly as received.
The reason is simple and people learn it the hard way: the pristine set is what you compare against later if a document is said to have been part of the supply and is not, or if a page number is disputed. An annotated bundle cannot answer that question about itself.
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Our charge for reading, paginating and indexing a supplied set, with the witness and date schedules and the reading list, is ₹4,999, usually within 3 – 10 days of the bundle reaching us.
Inside that: the completeness check against the statutory list; pagination; a contents table; the witness schedule; the date schedule; the allegation-to-page cross-reference; the questions-only reading list; and a short note of what is absent from the set.
The first conversation is not billed, and on this work it quite often ends with us saying that the set is incomplete and the first step is an application in court rather than an engagement with us. That is a useful half-hour for a client and a lost one for us, and we would rather have it that way round.
Stated beside the figure, because a price without a boundary is only half a quotation.
The advocate’s own engagement, settled between you and them and paid directly. The drafting or filing of a discharge application or any other application. Appearances. Translation of documents in another language, which is legal translation work. Obtaining documents that were never supplied. Whatever the court itself levies.
Also outside it: anything to do with bail, which is a separate matter running on its own timetable — anticipatory bail and surety bond work sit apart from this and are quoted apart from it, as does a character affidavit where one is called for.
And one consequence people do not think of until it bites: a pending matter surfaces on police verification, so where a police clearance certificate is needed for a job or a visa, that is its own exercise with its own answer and it should not be discovered in the week it is due.
Place Order — no advance, pay after work
A reader may expect numbers here that are deliberately absent, and the absence should be explained rather than look like a gap.
No punishment ranges for any offence. No court fee. No estimate of how long a trial runs. No count of hearings.
The periods we do print are only the ones the statute itself names — the fourteen days for supply, the sixty days for a discharge application, the ninety days for an intimation of progress. Everything else about a criminal case is set by the offence, the court, the list and facts we have not seen, and a number invented for a general page is read as a promise.
A short section for a reader this page does not otherwise address, because they come to us too.
A complainant or victim has an interest in what the police actually filed, and the statute recognises it in two places: the report must be supplied to the victim where they are represented by an advocate, and the investigating officer must inform the informant or victim of the progress of the investigation within ninety days.
The second of those is used by almost nobody and costs nothing to invoke. Where a complaint has gone quiet, that is the provision to ask about by name — our FIR guidance page deals with the earlier stages, and a right to information application is not the route for case records in a pending matter.
Place Order — no advance, pay after work
If one instruction survives this page, it is not about law and it is not addressed to lawyers.
Read the file. All of it, in order, once, in your own hands. The lawyer knows what the law makes of the file. Only you know whether the file is true.
It is a hard afternoon and people put it off for months. But nobody else in the building can tell whether the man named at serial seven was actually standing there, and that is the one contribution the person whose name is on the cover is uniquely able to make.
If the reading shows an ingredient with nothing against this accused, there is a route for it. A revisional court at the stage of charge asks whether the uncontroverted allegations establish the ingredients, on a test of strong suspicion rather than proof. See criminal revision.
Send us what the court supplied and the date you received it. We will tell you first whether the set is complete, then paginate and index it, build the witness and date schedules, and hand back a list of the factual questions only you can answer. The legal opinion is your advocate’s; the readable file is ours.
Every provision on this page, and where it was read. The statute is the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, and each section below was opened rather than recalled. Section 193 governs the report on completion of investigation: sub-section (3)(i) sets out what the report forwarded to the Magistrate must state, including the names of the parties, the nature of the information, the names of persons acquainted with the circumstances of the case, whether an offence appears to have been committed and by whom, whether the accused has been arrested, released on bond or bail bond or forwarded in custody, whether a medical examination report is attached in the case of specified offences, and the sequence of custody of any electronic device, and allows the report to be forwarded including through electronic communication; sub-section (3)(ii) requires the officer to inform the informant or the victim of the progress of the investigation within ninety days, by any means including electronic communication; sub-section (3)(iii) requires the action taken to be communicated to the person who first gave the information, in the manner prescribed by State rules; sub-section (8) provides that supply of the report and documents in electronic form shall be considered as duly served; and sub-section (9) preserves further investigation after a report has been forwarded, requires a further report where further evidence is obtained, and by its proviso requires the trial court’s permission for further investigation during trial, to be completed within ninety days extendable by the court. Section 230 is the supply provision: in a case instituted on a police report the Magistrate shall without delay, and in no case beyond fourteen days from the date of production or appearance of the accused, furnish to the accused and the victim, if represented by an advocate, free of cost a copy of the police report, the first information report recorded under section 173, the statements recorded under sub-section (3) of section 180 of all persons whom the prosecution proposes to examine as its witnesses, excluding any part for which exclusion was requested by the police officer under sub-section (7) of section 193, the confessions and statements recorded under section 183, and any other document or relevant extract forwarded with the report under sub-section (6) of section 193; its provisos allow the Magistrate, after perusing an excluded part and the reasons given, to direct that a copy be furnished, allow copies of voluminous documents to be furnished by electronic means or inspection in court, and provide that supply in electronic form shall be considered as duly furnished. Section 262 allows a discharge application within sixty days from the date of supply of copies of documents under section 230, and requires the Magistrate, on considering the police report and the documents sent with it under section 193 and after hearing both sides, to discharge the accused and record reasons where the charge is considered groundless. Section 250 allows a discharge application within sixty days from the date of commitment of the case under section 232, and requires the Judge to discharge and record reasons where there is not sufficient ground for proceeding. On the sixty-day period we have followed Sajith v. State of Kerala, Kerala High Court, decided 3 September 2024, in which the period in section 250(1) was read as directory rather than mandatory, and in which the court observed that for sessions and special court cases where there is no commitment the period may be counted from supply under section 230, following the approach of section 262(1), until the provision is amended.
The lines this page will not cross. No opinion is offered on the strength of any case, on what any document proves, on whether a charge will be framed, or on whether a discharge application should be brought — those are legal opinions on contested facts and the page says so in its own scope section rather than in a footnote. It prints no punishment ranges, no court fee and no estimate of how long anything takes; the only periods printed are the ones the statute itself names. It does not reproduce or summarise any real chargesheet. And it tells every reader, once and without qualification, that approaching a witness, a complainant or an investigating officer in a pending matter is itself an offence and is never a step we will assist with.
One thing we cannot resolve for you, and will not pretend to. Whether your matter is governed by the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita or by the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 is genuinely unsettled where the offence and the registration straddle 1 July 2024. The Madras High Court has held that the earlier law applies to offences committed before that date even where the case was registered after it, and the Punjab and Haryana High Court has referred to a larger bench the question whether every criminal application filed after that date is governed by the new Sanhita. We therefore state the new provisions and tell you to take the date of the offence and the date of registration to counsel together, rather than printing a rule that is not yet settled.
Neighbouring work on this site. The stages before a chargesheet — registration, refusal, the zero FIR, a closure report — are covered on FIR guidance and FIR registration in Delhi. Anticipatory bail is dealt with under section 482 BNSS, and quashing under section 528 BNSS. Those are separate proceedings and nothing on this page should be read as covering them.
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