This page is written for the person who got the phone call. Somebody has been picked up, or a notice has arrived, or a warrant has turned up for a case nobody knew existed. What nobody explains at that moment is that the early part of a criminal matter is almost entirely a matter of timing — a production within a day, a custody period with an end date, a window for one kind of bail that closes for good, a warrant that gets worse if it is left. Those clocks run whether or not anybody in the family knows about them. Knowing them is most of what you can usefully do.
Everything people imagine about a criminal case — the cross-examination, the speech, the moment of vindication — belongs to a stage most matters take years to reach. The part that decides how the next few months of a family’s life will actually go is much duller and much earlier, and it is almost entirely about timing.
Within a day, somebody must be produced before a Magistrate. Within a period fixed by statute, the investigation must be completed or a particular kind of bail becomes claimable. A warrant left alone becomes a worse warrant. A notice ignored becomes an arrest. None of those depend on the merits of the allegation, and none of them wait while a family decides what to do.
So the useful question on the first day is not “is he innocent” — of course you think so — but “what is due, and by when”. This page is a list of those clocks. The other two things you need are elsewhere and not repeated here: how a hearing day physically works is on our Tis Hazari page, and which court a matter belongs to at all is on our Saket page.
Get an advocate before the first production, not after it. Prepare two possible sureties on day one, before anybody has been granted anything. And write down the date on which the investigation period runs out. Those three things, done early, change outcomes more than anything else a family can do.
Section 58 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 provides that a person who has been arrested shall not be detained in custody for longer than twenty-four hours without being produced before a Magistrate, excluding the time necessary for the journey from the place of arrest to the court. It is not a courtesy or a practice; it is the constitutional architecture of arrest, and it exists precisely so that a person does not disappear into a police station.
What that first production means in practice is that a court, and not only the police, begins to decide what happens next: whether custody continues, of what kind, and for how long. It is also the first moment at which an advocate can be heard. A family that reaches the production with nobody representing them has lost the first opportunity in the case, and it does not come back.
The arrest provisions of the BNSS begin at Section 35. Alongside them sits a body of law directed at exactly the problem of arrests being made because they can be rather than because they are needed. In Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, decided by the Supreme Court in 2014, the Court laid down that in offences punishable with imprisonment up to seven years the police are not to arrest automatically, and are instead to issue a notice of appearance, arresting only where the recorded grounds justify it.
Two practical consequences. If a notice of appearance has been served on you, that is not a formality to be filed away — attend it, and take advice before you do. Ignoring a notice is the commonest way a matter that was never going to involve custody turns into one that does. And if an arrest has been made in a case of that class, whether the safeguards were followed is a question an advocate will want to examine at once.
Almost everything on this page hangs off a first information report, so it is worth being clear what it is. It is the record of information about a cognizable offence, written down at the police station, and it is the document that starts an investigation. It is not a finding, it is not evidence of guilt, and it is not a court’s view of anything. It is a starting point.
Two practical points people are rarely told. A zero FIR can be registered at any police station regardless of where the offence took place, and is then transferred to the station with jurisdiction — so “this is not our area” is not a reason to be sent away in a cognizable matter. And where information about a cognizable offence is refused, there is a route upward through the senior officer and then to a Magistrate; it is not the end of the road.
If you are the person complained against, get a copy of the FIR as early as you can and read it carefully. Almost every decision an advocate takes in the first fortnight comes out of that document — what it alleges, what it does not, when it was registered, and how long after the events it describes.
Both situations carry their own protections, and both are areas where families should not rely on general advice.
For a woman, the Sanhita restricts arrest after sunset and before sunrise except in exceptional circumstances, and where that is unavoidable, prior permission of a Magistrate is required. There are also requirements about a woman being arrested by a woman officer, and about the treatment and custody arrangements that follow. If those were not observed, that is something for an advocate to take up immediately rather than to mention in passing weeks later.
A child in conflict with the law is not dealt with by the ordinary criminal courts at all. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 applies, the matter goes before a Juvenile Justice Board, and the entire vocabulary is different — there is no “arrest and remand” in the sense this page has been describing. Where age is disputed there is a procedure for determining it, and establishing age correctly at the outset is one of the most consequential things that can be done. If the person is a child, say so at the first opportunity and produce whatever proof of age exists.
A protection that applies is worth far more raised on day one than discovered at month three. If any of the above fits your situation, it is the first thing to tell the advocate.
Families use “custody” as one word. The system uses two, and the difference matters.
| Police custody | Judicial custody | |
|---|---|---|
| Where | With the investigating police | In jail, under the court’s authority |
| Why | For the purposes of the investigation | Because the court has ordered detention pending the case |
| Ordered by | The court, on the police asking for it and giving reasons | The court |
| Duration | Limited, and granted in steps rather than in one block | Until bail is granted or the case concludes |
The practical point is that police custody is asked for, resisted and decided — it is an argument, at a hearing, that somebody should be present for. The second practical point is that the kind of custody affects what the family can and cannot do about visits and about handing things over, so ask rather than assume.
It is short. The police produce the person and say what they are seeking. The defence responds. The Magistrate makes an order. Nobody tries the case, nobody weighs the evidence in the way a trial would, and a family sitting through it for the first time often comes away feeling nothing happened.
What in fact happened is that the terms of the next stretch of somebody’s life were set. It is worth being there, worth being represented, and worth writing down exactly what was ordered and what the next date is — because that date is the next clock.
This is the provision most families have never heard of and most need to know. Under Section 187(3) of the BNSS, detention during investigation is allowed only up to a maximum period. If that period expires and the investigation has not been completed — that is, the charge-sheet has not been filed — the accused becomes entitled to be released on bail, provided he applies and is prepared to furnish bail.
Notice what this does not depend on. It has nothing to do with how strong the case is, how serious the allegation is, or how the earlier bail applications went. It is a consequence of the investigation running out of time. People who have been refused bail twice on the merits have been released on this.
The maximum is ninety days for the more serious class of offence and sixty days otherwise.
Which of the two applies is worth being careful about, because the drafting changed. The old Code used the phrase “not less than ten years”. The BNSS says “ten years or more”, and whether that alters the class of offences that attract the longer period has been argued.
The Karnataka High Court has treated the substitution as a play of words rather than a change of meaning, so that the ninety-day period applies where the offence carries a minimum of ten years, and not merely where the maximum sentence reaches ten years. A challenge was dismissed by the Supreme Court without reasons, which leaves the question less than conclusively settled.
The difference between sixty and ninety days is a month of somebody’s liberty, and it turns on the precise offence charged and on how a court reads a phrase that is currently being argued about. Have it worked out on the actual FIR by somebody who has read it.
Default bail has to be asked for. It is a strong right — it does not depend on the court agreeing that the case is weak — but it is not self-executing, and if the period passes without an application being made and the charge-sheet is then filed, the opportunity ordinarily goes with it.
That is why this is a diary entry and not a legal argument. Somebody outside — a family member, not only the advocate — should have the date written down from the first week, and should raise it as it approaches rather than after it passes. It costs nothing to be the person who remembers.
Families argue innocence. Courts, at the bail stage, mostly are not deciding that — a bail hearing is not a trial and the merits are looked at only broadly. What is being weighed is a narrower set of risks, and understanding which ones they are changes what the papers should contain.
| What the court is asking | What answers it |
|---|---|
| Will this person come back for every date? | Roots — family here, a job here, a home here, years at the same address |
| Will evidence be tampered with, or witnesses approached? | Whether the investigation is over, what is left to collect, and the person’s conduct so far |
| Is this person likely to offend again meanwhile? | Antecedents — whether there is a history, and of what |
| How grave is the allegation, and what stage is it at? | The offence itself, and whether the investigation still needs custody at all |
| Is there anything that makes custody particularly harsh here? | Age, health, sole care of dependants, a student in the middle of a course |
Read that list again as a shopping list for documents. Proof of address going back years, an employer’s letter, a school or college record, medical papers, proof that somebody depends on the person — these are what actually go into an application. A page of assertion that the accused is a good person is not a substitute for one document showing he has lived in the same place for eleven years.
| What it is called | What it actually is |
|---|---|
| Bail in a bailable offence | Release is the rule; it is claimed as a matter of right on furnishing bail |
| Bail in a non-bailable offence | A discretion, exercised by the court on the facts, the offence and the antecedents |
| Default bail | Not about the merits at all — it arises because the investigation exceeded its period |
| Interim bail | A short, temporary order while a fuller application is decided |
| Anticipatory bail | Applied for before arrest, directing release on bail if arrest happens |
| Bail pending appeal or suspension of sentence | After conviction, a different question with different tests |
They are not interchangeable and the papers are not the same. We prepare the documentation for a bail application and for anticipatory bail to an advocate’s instructions; which one is right is the advocate’s call on the facts, not a choice from a menu.
Where there is a reasonable apprehension of arrest in a non-bailable offence, an application can be made in advance for an order that, in the event of arrest, the person shall be released on bail, on conditions the court imposes. It is not available for every offence — several statutes restrict or exclude it — and it is refused at least as often as it is granted.
Timing is the whole thing again. An application made when there is a genuine, articulable apprehension stands differently from one made months after an FIR while the person has been unreachable. And an order once obtained usually comes with conditions — joining the investigation, not leaving the country, not contacting witnesses — which are not suggestions. Breaching them is how a granted order gets cancelled.
This is the single most misunderstood thing in the whole process, and it causes more distress than any other part of it. A court says bail is granted. The family celebrates. Two days later the person is still inside and nobody can explain why.
What an order grants is permission. Between that permission and somebody walking out of a jail gate there is a chain, and every link in it takes time.
Nothing in that list can be hurried by being upset about it. All of it can be shortened by having the sureties and their papers ready before the order rather than after.
A surety is a person who undertakes responsibility for the accused attending court, and who is answerable for the amount if he does not. The court has to be satisfied that the surety is a real, identifiable, locally traceable person who can answer for that amount.
What that means in practice is documents, and families almost never have them ready. Ask your advocate, on day one, exactly what the court in that matter is likely to want, and assemble it while the application is still pending. Two possible sureties, not one, because one may not be accepted.
Where an affidavit is required from a surety, that is ordinary work and we do it — the affidavit drafted, stamped and sworn before an oath commissioner. What we cannot do, and nobody should, is arrange a surety for money. A paid stranger standing as surety is a serious problem in itself.
Bail almost always comes with conditions: attend every date, do not leave the jurisdiction without permission, do not contact or influence witnesses, surrender a passport, report as directed. They read like formalities and they are not.
Bail can be cancelled, and the ordinary reasons are not fresh evidence of guilt — they are breach of conditions, absence from dates, threatening or approaching witnesses, and committing a fresh offence while on bail. The person most likely to undo a hard-won order is the person who received it. Say this out loud to whoever it concerns, on the day they come out.
The filing of the final report ends the investigation phase and begins the shaping of a trial. The documents relied on are supplied to the accused; the court considers whether there is enough to proceed and frames charges if there is; and the matter moves towards evidence.
Two things to do on that day rather than later. Get the complete set of supplied documents and actually read all of it, including the pages that look like filler — the defence is built out of what is in that bundle and out of what is conspicuously not. And note that the default-bail window discussed above closes here, so if that clock was running, it has now stopped.
Every other deadline on this page is set by law. This one is set by technology, and it is the one families almost always miss, because in the first week nobody is thinking about proof — they are thinking about getting somebody out.
Camera recordings are overwritten, often within days and sometimes within hours. Call detail records are retained for a limited time. A shopkeeper who saw what happened remembers the date clearly this week and vaguely next month. An injury photographs differently on day one than on day ten. A medical examination done at the time says something a certificate written later cannot.
None of this is about building a case yourself — that is the advocate’s job. It is about making sure something still exists for them to work with. Preservation is cheap in week one and impossible in month three.
A single incident very often produces two cases. There is a quarrel; one side reaches the police station first; the other side files a complaint of its own shortly after. Both are registered, both proceed, and each is used in the other.
This changes the shape of the problem in ways that are not obvious. Somebody can be an accused in one file and a complainant in the other at the same time. A settlement in one does not automatically end the other. And a statement made in one case is available to be quoted in the second, which is why giving a version in a hurry, to be helpful, is a mistake so many people make early on.
The practical instruction is simple: tell your advocate about the other case at the first meeting, even if you believe it is nonsense, and especially if you filed it. A cross-case discovered later by the other side is worth more to them than it ever would have cost you to disclose.
These are three steps on one ladder, and the ladder only goes one way if it is ignored.
| What arrived | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Summons | A direction to appear on a date | Appear, or have an advocate appear and seek exemption — do not simply not go |
| Bailable warrant | The court wants you brought, but release on furnishing bail is contemplated | Move quickly to appear and have it recalled |
| Non-bailable warrant | The court wants you brought, and release is not automatic | Advocate immediately; surrender and recall are usually better than waiting |
| Proclamation | The court has declared you absconding; property can follow | Urgent. This is not a stage to manage yourself |
The reason this ladder exists is that courts assume a person who does not come is avoiding the court. A very large share of the people at the top of that ladder simply moved house and never received anything. That explanation carries weight only if somebody goes and makes it.
This is serious and it is also not the end. Property can be attached, and the practical position — passports, verification, employment — gets difficult in ways that reach well beyond the case. But there is a route back, it starts with appearing and applying, and it gets harder with every month it waits.
What does not work is hoping. A proclaimed person does not quietly age out of the system; the record stays and surfaces at the worst possible moment, usually while trying to do something entirely unrelated.
Sometimes the issue is not bail at all. Where a case is an abuse of process, or where the parties have genuinely settled a matter of the kind that can be brought to an end, the route is to ask the High Court to quash the proceedings rather than to fight them for years. We prepare the papers for a quashing petition to counsel’s instructions.
Two honest caveats. This is a High Court remedy, not a district court one, so it is a different forum and a different cost. And it is not available merely because the allegation is false — a disputed version of facts is what a trial is for. Whether it fits is a question for an advocate who has read the FIR.
Some offences are compoundable, with or without the court’s permission, and there are also mechanisms by which a matter can be brought to an end with the court’s involvement. Many serious offences cannot be compounded at all.
This matters because of what happens in the corridor. Money changes hands on an assurance that a case will be “taken back”, and then the prosecution continues, because in that category of offence the complainant never had the power to withdraw it. Before paying anything to anybody, establish whether the case is even capable of ending that way.
“I can get the case dropped.” “I know people in that court.” Nobody can sell you an outcome. An advocate can tell you what is arguable and what the realistic range is, and a good one will tell you when your position is weak.
This page is mostly written for the accused side because that is where the panic is. But the person who made the complaint has their own timings, and the complainant who follows the file does considerably better than the one who waits to be told.
Counsel at the State’s expense is built into the criminal scheme itself. Running alongside it, the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 opens free services to a list of categories, with women and children included whatever their income. A legal services desk sits inside Delhi’s court campuses; the numbers are 1516 within Delhi and 15100 nationwide.
The mistake is using it late. Families exhaust their savings on the first two months and approach legal services in the fourth, by which time several of the early opportunities have passed. If you qualify, go on the first day, not the last.
Nobody writes this down, so families budget for one thing and are hit by five. Setting aside professional fees entirely — which are between you and your advocate and appear nowhere on this site — here is the shape of it.
Time, mostly. Dates fall on working days. Somebody has to attend, and in many matters that somebody is the accused personally. Over a case that runs for years, the lost wages are usually the largest single number in the whole exercise, and almost nobody counts them at the start.
The State’s own charges. Court fee where it applies, stamp on affidavits and bonds, charges for certified copies. These are levied by the authority, not by anybody acting for you, and they are the same whoever prepares the papers.
Documents and running around. Photocopies in sets, attestation, photographs, translations where a paper is in the wrong language, travel to the complex and back for each of those errands. Individually small, collectively not.
The surety’s burden. A surety takes on a real responsibility and gives up a day to do it. It is worth acknowledging rather than treating as a favour that costs nothing.
Two ways to make this smaller, both boring. Do things once, properly, so they are not done twice — a rejected filing is paid for two times. And find out on day one whether you qualify for free legal services, because for a family that does, the largest avoidable cost simply disappears.
Built in 2005 for the north-west of the city, this campus contains several district courts rather than one. Navigation here works the way it works everywhere: by the number printed beside your matter on the day’s list. Not by the subject, and not by whichever direction a stranger waves you in.
No district-allocation chart appears on this page on purpose. Those assignments are made administratively, they have shifted each time a new campus opened, and an out-of-date chart is exactly what sends somebody across the city for nothing. What never goes stale: the paper in your hand, the official case system, and the person at the counter.
Take the Metro if you can — on a weekday morning it is simply the dependable option, while court-side parking is gone early and the roads around it crawl. You will be screened on the way in, so treat the gate as its own delay rather than part of the travel, bring government photo ID, and leave everything else behind.
Visits are governed by the rules of the institution holding the person, and by what kind of custody they are in, so ask rather than assume — what is permitted, on what days, with what identification, and what may and may not be handed over. Rules differ and they change.
Two things worth knowing in advance. What you can pass to somebody inside is limited and procedural, not a matter of goodwill at the gate. And communication is not private, so a case should not be discussed in a way that assumes it is. Anything that needs to be said about the case should go through the advocate.
A person who has not been convicted of anything can nevertheless spend a very long time in custody simply because the case has not finished. The law recognises this and provides for release where an undertrial has already spent a substantial part of the maximum sentence in detention, with a shorter threshold for a first-time offender and exceptions for the most serious offences.
The reason to know this exists is that it is another right that has to be claimed. Nobody comes around the jail with a list. Somebody outside has to be counting the months, and somebody has to make the application. If a matter has been running a long time and bail was refused early on, it is worth asking an advocate specifically whether this now applies — the answer changes with time even when nothing else in the case has.
The same is true of a bail application that failed a year ago. Refusal is not permanent; a fresh application on changed circumstances is a normal step, and the passage of time with no progress in the trial is itself a change of circumstance.
Coming out is not the end of the case; it is the beginning of the long part. What undoes people at this stage is not the allegation but ordinary carelessness.
And one thing that is easy to forget in relief: obtain and keep a certified copy of the bail order itself. It gets asked for — at verification, at a later stage of the case, occasionally by an employer — and getting it months later is a great deal harder than getting it in the same week.
One family member should keep a file, and in a criminal matter it should have a date sheet at the front — one line per date: what happened, what was ordered, what the next date is, and what has to be ready before it.
Also in it: the FIR number and police station, the case number once there is one, a copy of every application filed and every order received, the surety documents, and a line for each sum handed over, to whom, and against what. Cases like this run for years and outlast phones and memory. Keep a paper copy and a scanned copy in two places.
| What people do | What it takes away |
|---|---|
| Reaching the first production without an advocate | The first opportunity in the case, and it does not return |
| Ignoring a notice of appearance | A matter that need not have involved custody turning into one that does |
| Nobody diarising the investigation deadline | A default-bail right that expires unclaimed |
| Arranging sureties only after bail is granted | Days in custody after a court has said the person may go |
| Bringing one surety instead of two | A wasted day if that one is not accepted |
| Breaching a bail condition | Cancellation of an order that took months to get |
| Contacting a witness “just to explain” | The strongest single argument against bail, handed over free |
| Paying somebody who promises the case will be dropped | The money, and often a worse position than before |
| Staying away after a warrant | A non-bailable warrant, then proclamation, then attachment |
| Not reading the charge-sheet bundle in full | Building a defence without knowing what is in the case |
A copy of the FIR. Identity and address proof for the accused and for each surety. Proof of means or of property for the sureties. Medical papers where health is in issue. Employment or study proof where roots in the community are being shown. And an affidavit in the form the court wants, sworn before an oath commissioner, wherever one is required.
Two small disciplines. Spell each name the same way on every single sheet; where an ID and a bond disagree, somebody will stop and ask, and it will be on the morning you can least afford it. And anything written in a script the court does not work in needs a translation ready beforehand — arranged on the day, it simply becomes the next date.
Listed alphabetically. We do not rank, rate or feature advocates, and nobody pays for a position here — the reason is on our Find an Advocate page. Neither reading a profile nor writing to somebody through it costs anything.
Papers are what we make and lodge. There is no advocate on this staff and no one from here stands up in a courtroom. For a matter like this one, that means the bail application or the anticipatory bail papers typed and drawn to your advocate’s instructions, the surety affidavits, the annexures paginated and tabbed, the stamping, the oath arranged, the sets made, the lodging done and the receipt brought back, certified copies applied for, and applications and petitions drafted as counsel directs.
Argument belongs to counsel. Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it. Nobody engaged so far? The directory asks nothing of you to browse or to message through, and not one person on it has handed us money of any kind.
Different papers, different figures — and each one is written on its own service page, plainly, before you commit to anything. Whatever the State charges stays outside that number: court fee, stamp, copying charges all go to the office collecting them, and we tell you what they come to rather than quietly absorbing them into ours.
The full amount is stated before anyone starts, and no money changes hands up front. Where the honest answer is that counsel is needed rather than paperwork, you will hear that on the phone, and being sent to the directory costs you nothing at all. Where the State will act for you free, you will hear that too.
Photographing the papers and sending them on WhatsApp is usually faster than explaining them, and in this sort of matter faster is the whole point — nothing else we handle rewards speed as much.
Tell us the police station, roughly what the allegation is, and when the production is. We will tell you what has to be ready before it and what the sureties will need, and put the directory in front of you. Searching it is free and we take no commission from anybody on it.
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