A letter arrives asking somebody to appear before an agency, and the household stops functioning. Half the panic is about the wrong thing. Being called is not being charged, and a great many people are called because they hold a record or witnessed a transaction. What is genuinely at stake is narrower and more permanent: what gets written down and signed that day, what documents leave your hands and whether you can prove which ones, and whether you spoke to an advocate before you walked in or only afterwards. This page is about that, and it takes the unfashionable line throughout — attend, tell the truth, get advice, keep records.
The letter is read once, quickly, and then the family holds a meeting. By evening somebody has decided the worst has happened. It usually has not.
Investigations require information, and information sits with people: the person who kept the ledger, the person who signed the delivery note, the person whose account received a payment for an entirely ordinary reason, the person who happened to be a director when something was filed. A very large share of the people summoned in any matter are in one of those categories.
What is true regardless of category is the part nobody focuses on. A record is made. It is signed. It is read back, months or years later, by people looking for inconsistencies. That is the thing to take seriously, and it is entirely within your control.
Speak to an advocate before you go, not after. Attend. Say what is true and no more than you know. Read anything before signing it, and write your own note the same evening.
The rest of the system is described elsewhere and not repeated here: what happens after an arrest is on our Rohini page, how anything eventually gets proved is on the Dwarka page, and the mechanics of a hearing day are on the Tis Hazari page.
Most people read the date and stop. There is more on it than that, and each item changes what should happen next.
| What to look for | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Which agency issued it | Powers, procedure and consequences differ between a police investigation, a tax proceeding and a specialised agency |
| Under which statute and provision | This tells your advocate almost everything about the setting you are walking into |
| Who signed it, and their designation | Establishes the authority, and is what a reply is addressed to |
| What is required — attendance, documents, or both | Decides what you carry and what list you prepare |
| Date, time and exact place | Obvious, and still the thing people get wrong when an office has several entrances |
| Whether it names a case or a subject | Tells you what the questions will be about, which is what you prepare for |
Photograph every page, including the envelope if it shows a date. Then send it to an advocate before you do anything else. That sequence — read, photograph, advise — costs an afternoon and changes the whole matter.
The instinct to avoid the date is strong and it is always wrong. Non-attendance produces three things at once: it invites more coercive steps, it becomes a fact recorded against you and described later as non-cooperation, and it destroys the only genuine advantage available to somebody in your position, which is having been the person who came and explained.
Where the date is genuinely impossible — you are in hospital, you are out of the country, the notice reached you after the date — the answer is to write, in advance and on record, explaining and asking for another date. That is a normal request and it is normally accommodated. What is not accommodated is silence.
If you have been called, you have been called. A relative, an employee or a chartered accountant attending “on your behalf” does not discharge a summons addressed to you, and it creates an impression that costs more than the inconvenience you were avoiding.
“An agency has called me” describes a dozen different situations. The powers, the procedure, the consequences of not attending and even what a “statement” is differ between them, which is why the first thing your advocate will look at is not what you did but who is asking.
| Broadly | What that setting usually involves |
|---|---|
| Police, investigating an offence | Attendance required during investigation; statements recorded in the course of it, with their own rules about how they may later be used |
| A specialised economic-offence authority | Its own statutory power to summon and to record statements, sometimes on oath, with its own consequences for non-attendance |
| A tax or indirect-tax authority | Assessment and inquiry powers that are primarily civil, though they can lead elsewhere |
| A regulator | Powers under the statute that creates it, usually aimed at the regulated activity rather than at the individual |
| A company-affairs investigation | Directed at the company and its officers, with the company’s own records at the centre |
We are deliberately not setting out each agency’s procedure section by section. Those provisions are amended, they are interpreted differently in different settings, and a confident paragraph on a website is exactly the thing that misleads somebody at the worst moment. What the table is for is a single point: find out which setting you are in, and get advice specific to it.
Some statutes provide that offences under them are tried by courts designated for the purpose, rather than by the ordinary courts. That is why particular kinds of matter are associated with particular complexes, and why Rouse Avenue is spoken of the way it is.
For somebody involved, the practical implications are modest and worth knowing anyway. The procedure is broadly the ordinary criminal procedure unless the statute says otherwise. The court hears a narrower range of subjects, so counsel who appear there regularly know the pattern. And because such courts are few, the listing can be heavy, which affects how dates fall.
What it does not mean is that anything about your own conduct of the matter changes. The same things decide it: the record, the documents, and whether you were consistent.
People want a clean answer to this and there often is not one at the start. Somebody called as a person with knowledge can, as an investigation develops, come to be regarded differently. That is not a trick; it is what investigation means.
Two consequences follow, and they point in the same direction. First, do not treat the first summons as unimportant merely because you believe you are a witness — the record you make that day is the record that exists if your position changes. Second, do not treat it as a catastrophe either, because behaving like an accused when you are not is how people volunteer information nobody asked for.
The middle path is what your advocate is for: attend as what you are, answer what is asked, accurately, and do not speculate about other people, other transactions or what somebody else may have done.
One more thing belongs in that list and people leave it out because it feels excessive: decide in advance how long you can stay. If you have a genuine constraint — a child to collect, a medical appointment, a return train — say so at the beginning of the day rather than at the seventh hour, when saying it looks like an attempt to leave.
What preparation does not mean is constructing an account. Refreshing your memory from documents is proper and sensible; deciding in advance what story fits best is the thing this page warns against throughout, and it is usually visible.
At some point what you have said is written down and put in front of you to sign. Everything else about the day is temporary; this is permanent.
The reason to labour this is what happens later. Two years on, in a courtroom, a line from that statement is read aloud and you are asked to explain it. “I signed without reading, it was eleven at night” is an answer people give, and it helps almost nobody.
People imagine something cinematic. It is mostly waiting, then a long conversation across a desk, conducted in ordinary language, with someone typing.
What surprises people is the length. Sessions run for hours, sometimes across a meal time, sometimes into the evening, and the questions circle back to the same ground more than once. That is a normal method, not a trick — the same question asked at the second hour and the sixth tests whether the answer is remembered or constructed. An honest person answering accurately has nothing to fear from repetition; it only defeats an account that was invented.
And one thing to hold on to when the hours stretch: you are not obliged to fill silences. If a question has been answered, it has been answered. The pressure to keep talking is the single most productive thing in the room for everybody except you.
Article 20(3) of the Constitution provides that no person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself. That is a real and important protection, and it is also narrower and more technical than the way it is usually described in conversation.
How it applies depends on the proceeding, on the provision under which you have been called, and on the particular question. It is not a general entitlement to decline to answer anything, and treating it as one has consequences of its own. It is also not nothing.
This is precisely the question you cannot resolve from a web page, including this one. It is the reason the advice here is always the same: get an advocate before the date, tell them the whole position frankly, and be guided on the specific setting you are walking into.
Whether counsel may be present while you are questioned varies with the agency and the provision, and the position has been considered by courts in different contexts. Ask your own advocate rather than relying on what somebody was told in a different kind of matter.
What is not in doubt, and is where most of the value lies anyway: you can consult an advocate before you attend, and you can consult one immediately afterwards. The preparation beforehand and the debrief the same evening are worth more than almost anything that could happen inside the room.
Where records are asked for, the temptation is to carry everything, because that feels cooperative. It is a mistake, for a reason that has nothing to do with concealment: if you do not know what you handed over, you cannot answer questions about it later, and you cannot notice if something goes missing.
That list, prepared in advance, also does something useful inside the room: it makes the handover orderly and short, and it signals that the person in front of them is organised rather than evasive.
Devices are now central to almost every investigation of this kind, and this is where people panic hardest and behave worst.
The rules for you are the same as for paper, with one addition that matters more than all the rest. Know exactly what is being taken. Ask for it to be described and listed. Where a copy of the contents is made, note that it was made and how the record describes it. And tell your advocate the same day.
Do not delete anything. Not messages, not photographs, not an email folder, not an app. Deletion before a device is handed over is detectable, it is the single most damaging act available to somebody in this position, and it converts a question about a transaction into a question about your conduct. People who had nothing to fear have destroyed themselves at exactly this point.
The same applies to asking somebody else to delete something, or to a company “cleaning up” records once it knows an inquiry is coming. If there is material you believe is private and irrelevant, that is a point to raise through your advocate, on record — not a reason to act on your own.
A search at a home or an office is the most frightening version of this and the one where clear instructions help most, because there is no time to work anything out.
Two things not to do: do not obstruct, and do not offer anything to anybody. Both turn a bad day into a separate and much worse case.
Often the first sign is not a summons at all. The bank writes asking about a transaction, or requires fresh documents, or a payment is held, or a relationship manager rings with an unusually specific question.
Banks have their own obligations to monitor and report, and those exist independently of any investigation. So a query is not proof that anything is happening elsewhere — but it is a signal worth taking seriously rather than dismissing as paperwork.
And keep those replies. If the matter ever does become something larger, a contemporaneous explanation given to the bank at the time, with documents attached, is a considerably better position than the same explanation offered three years later.
When an account is frozen or property attached, people read it as a finding of guilt. It is not. It is an interim measure taken during a proceeding, it is done under a specific power, and it carries its own route of challenge with its own time limits.
What matters practically is speed and specificity. Find out precisely what has been frozen and under what order — not what the bank branch told somebody on the phone. Get the order or communication in writing. Then take advice immediately, because the remedies here are time-bound and the first weeks matter.
And where the freeze affects something urgent and human — salary payments, a medical expense, a statutory dues payment — say so early and specifically, with documents. Requests of that kind are made and considered; they are considered much better when they are precise.
A great many of these situations do not begin with an agency at all. They begin with a notice from a tax or departmental authority asking about a transaction, a deposit, a mismatch or a return. People treat that as routine, reply casually, and are surprised when it becomes something else.
Treat the first notice as the beginning, because it frequently is. Two things follow. The reply you send is the first version of your account, and everything later is measured against it — so it should be accurate, complete on the point asked, and prepared with the documents rather than from memory. And it should not be sent by whoever happens to be free that week.
Where a reply is what is needed, that is work we do — the written reply or representation drafted, annexed, and sent with proof of dispatch kept on file.
A common and genuinely uncomfortable position: you have been called because of a transaction with a person or a company that is under investigation, and you have done nothing beyond doing business with them.
The instinct is either to distance yourself dramatically or to protect the other person out of loyalty. Both are mistakes. The first produces overstatement that a document will contradict; the second produces evasiveness that is read as complicity and, in the worst version, an untrue statement made to shield somebody who will not be helped by it.
The right approach is duller. Describe your own dealings accurately, produce the records of them, and decline to speculate about what anybody else was doing or why. “I do not know” is the correct answer to most questions about another person’s affairs, and it is an answer that survives.
Comparing notes before attending, agreeing what to say, or messaging afterwards about what was asked — each of those is visible later and each converts a witness into something worse. If several people from one business are called, that is precisely the moment for each to take their own advice.
Two practical questions come up immediately and neither has a comfortable answer that a website can give.
Travel. Where an investigation is under way, restrictions on leaving the country can exist, and people sometimes discover one at an airport counter with a boarding pass in hand. Do not plan an international trip on an assumption, and do not attempt to travel in order to find out. Ask your advocate to establish the position, and where travel is genuinely necessary, there are ways to seek permission that are made in advance, on record.
Work. Whether to tell an employer depends on your contract, your role and any regulatory obligation that attaches to it — some positions carry a duty to disclose. Take advice before deciding, and if disclosure is required, make it once, in writing, factually and without commentary. What almost always goes badly is an employer learning about it from somewhere else.
And a plain word about the rest of it. These matters run for years, they arrive in sudden bursts after long silences, and they are wearing on the person in the middle and on the household around them. Keeping the file in order is the practical part; the other part is not carrying it alone. People who tell one or two trusted people and keep their routine do better through this than people who disappear into it.
A tax proceeding, a regulatory inquiry and a criminal investigation can run at the same time on overlapping facts, because they are created by different statutes and ask different questions. That is normal and it is not double jeopardy.
The danger it creates is specific and it defeats people who are telling the truth. A reply drafted quickly in one proceeding, by a different adviser, takes a position that is technically convenient there — and is then produced in another where it reads very differently.
Tell every adviser about every proceeding. Make sure the factual narrative is identical in all of them, whatever the legal arguments are. Facts stated in one forum are read in the others, and the inconsistency costs more than the point it was meant to win.
Where the matter concerns a business, two separate questions arise and they should not be answered by the same person on autopilot: what the company’s position is, and what each individual’s position is.
Several statutes attach liability to persons in charge of and responsible to the company for the conduct of its business, and some create duties for particular officers. A director who signed nothing and knew nothing stands differently from one who did — but that difference exists in the company’s own records, which means those records matter to individuals personally.
And one piece of advice for the individual: where your interests and the company’s may diverge, take your own advice. That is not disloyalty; it is the ordinary position, and it is better recognised early than discovered later.
You will not remember this day accurately in six months. You will believe you will. You will not.
So write it down that night, while it is fresh: the time you arrived and left, who was present, what you were asked about in substance, what you answered, what documents you handed over, whether you were given a copy of anything, and anything that felt unusual. Keep it with the summons and the list.
Keep it somewhere that will still exist in five years, and not only on a phone. Phones are replaced, lost and occasionally handed over, and a note that exists only on a device you no longer control is a note you no longer have. A printed copy in the file, or a copy with a trusted person, costs nothing and removes that risk entirely.
That note is not evidence of the truth of what it says, and it is not a substitute for the official record. What it is, is the thing that lets your advocate reconstruct the day, spot an inconsistency between the recorded statement and what actually happened, and prepare for the next call. It takes twenty minutes and it is the highest-value twenty minutes of the whole week.
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.
The family around the person summoned does as much damage as good, usually with the best intentions. Five relatives each phoning a contact, each collecting a different opinion, and each relaying it before the date produces somebody who walks in confused and contradicts themselves.
Whatever is happening, your position is not improved by explaining it publicly. A post, a status, a forwarded message, a conversation with a journalist — all of it is available to be produced, none of it is protected, and it is invariably written in a tone that reads badly later.
The same applies within a workplace. An email to colleagues explaining your side becomes a document in the file. If something has to be said institutionally, it should be said once, in writing, on advice.
Almost nobody is called once. A second summons arrives, sometimes weeks later, sometimes a year later, often after you have decided the matter has gone away. People read the second one with far more dread than the first, and usually with less preparation.
Reverse that. By the second call you have something you did not have the first time: a record of what was asked, what you answered and what you produced. Read your own note before you go. Read the list of documents. Where you are asked the same thing again — and you will be — answer it the same way, because the comparison between the two is part of the point.
And if a long silence follows, do not treat it as an ending. Silence in an investigation is not closure; it is silence. Keep the file, keep the documents, and do not discard anything on the assumption that it is over.
People walk in worrying about clever questions. In practice, the damage is almost always self-inflicted, and it comes from filling silence.
A guess offered as a fact. “It must have been around March”, “I think he was the one who signed”, “probably about two lakh” — each of those becomes a recorded statement, and each is checked against a document that says something else. The person is then asked to explain a discrepancy they created by being helpful.
None of this is about being unhelpful. It is the difference between answering and performing. Accuracy is co-operation; approximation only looks like it.
Not always with a trial, and the possibilities are worth knowing so that the years feel less shapeless.
An investigation may conclude without proceedings against a particular person. A report may be filed and a court may decline to proceed against somebody named in it. A person charged may be discharged before trial begins. A matter may run to trial and end in acquittal or conviction. A proceeding under one statute may end while another continues.
It is also worth knowing that an outcome in one proceeding does not automatically end another. A tax matter concluded does not close a criminal one, and the reverse is equally true. Ask, at each stage, exactly which proceeding has ended and which has not, because families routinely celebrate the conclusion of one and are then startled by a notice in another.
What all of the earlier outcomes have in common is that somebody has to ask for them. Discharge is applied for. Relief is sought. A representation is made. Nothing on that list happens because time passed, which is why drift is the one strategy that never works.
Professional fees are between you and your advocate and appear nowhere on this site. Everything else about the cost of an investigation is worth seeing in advance, because it is not what people expect.
Time, in working days. Each attendance is a day, sometimes a very long one, and there will be several over the years. For somebody self-employed that is the largest number in the whole exercise.
Reconstruction. Getting old bank statements, retrieving records from a former accountant, obtaining copies of filings, having material translated — each small, all adding up, and all of it avoidable if the file is kept from the first day.
The company’s share, and yours. Where a business is involved, somebody has to decide early what the company pays for and what individuals pay for themselves — and where interests may diverge, separate advice is not a luxury. Deciding this at the outset is far less unpleasant than deciding it in year two.
Everything that is not money. Sleep, attention, and the ordinary running of a household over several years. This is the real cost and nobody budgets for it, which is why the practical advice on this page keeps coming back to the same thing: put the boring systems in place early — one file, one index, one adviser, one person handling it — so that the matter occupies a defined space rather than all of it.
One honest note on saving money. The single cheapest thing available is the conversation with an advocate before the first attendance. Everything expensive that happens later tends to trace back to a statement made, or a document handed over, on a day when nobody had been asked.
Central Delhi, near ITO, and the newest of the city’s court campuses — in use since 2019. It is associated with designated and special courts, which is why matters involving investigating agencies are heard there.
For your purposes it works like every other campus: the number against your matter in the day’s list is what gets you to the right room, and the mechanics of the morning are the same ones set out on our Tis Hazari page. No district-allocation chart appears here, deliberately — that mapping is administrative, it changes, and a stale version sends people to the wrong address.
The area around ITO is well connected by Metro and badly served by parking, so on a working morning the choice makes itself. Security screening stands between the gate and the building; count it separately from your travel time, bring government photo identity, and carry as little as the day requires.
The ordinary entitlements apply here as everywhere. The Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 sets out who may claim free legal services, a woman qualifies whatever her income, and there is a legal services desk inside Delhi’s court campuses. The numbers to call are 1516 within Delhi and 15100 nationally.
From the first summons, keep a file: the summons itself, the list of documents produced, the acknowledgments, any copy of a statement, your own contemporaneous notes, and every subsequent communication.
At the front, keep a one-line index — date, what happened, what was handed over, what is next. These matters run for years and involve several visits, and the person who can turn to one page and say exactly what was produced on which date is in a completely different position from the person reconstructing it from a phone gallery.
| What people do | What it produces |
|---|---|
| Ignore the summons | Coercive steps, and a record of non-cooperation |
| Attend without speaking to an advocate first | Avoidable statements that cannot be taken back |
| Delete messages or wipe a device | A second and usually worse case, about conduct rather than facts |
| Sign a statement unread | A line read back in a courtroom years later |
| Hand over documents with no list | No way to say what was produced, or to notice what is missing |
| Speculate about other people | Statements about matters you do not actually know |
| Take different positions in the tax and criminal proceedings | An inconsistency produced against you in both |
| Send a relative or an employee instead | The summons undischarged and an impression created |
| Pay somebody who says they can make it go away | The money, and a new and independent offence |
| Explain yourself publicly | A document in the file, written in the worst possible tone |
The summons and every later communication. Your list of documents produced, with the acknowledgments. Identity and address documents. Anything establishing your actual role — appointment letter, board minutes, delegation of authority, the bank mandate showing who could sign. Your own notes of each attendance. And affidavits in the required form, sworn before an oath commissioner, where one is called for.
Two habits. Use one spelling of every name across everything, because mismatches invite questions that have nothing to do with the merits. And where a document is in a language the proceeding does not work in, get a translation made in advance rather than handing over something nobody present can read.
This is a documentation and filing business. Nobody here is an advocate, nobody accompanies you to an agency, and nobody addresses a court on your behalf. Our half is the paper: a written reply or representation where one is to be sent, the document list and its acknowledgment copies, applications and petitions typed and drawn to counsel’s instructions, annexures ordered and paginated, stamping, the swearing, the lodging and the receipt, and certified copies when orders come.
Everything said in a room, whether an agency’s or a courtroom, belongs to your advocate. Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it. If nobody is engaged yet, the directory costs nothing to open or to write through, and no listing on it was bought.
Each document carries its own figure, printed on that document’s service page where you can read it before ordering anything. What the State levies — court fee, stamp, copying charges — is named separately, because it is collected by the office concerned and does not come to us.
The whole amount is stated before work starts and nothing is taken up front. Where the honest answer is that what you need is counsel and not paperwork — which, at the summons stage, is very often the answer — that is what we will say on the call, and pointing you at the directory costs nothing.
Send us a photograph of it. We will tell you which agency and provision it is under, what has actually been asked for, and what list and papers should be ready — and put the directory in front of you so you can speak to an advocate before you attend rather than after. Searching it is free and we take no commission from anybody on it.
Demand pehle se lagi hui hai — appeal karne se wo rukti NAHI, rukwani padti hai alag se (s.220(6)). 30 din CIT(A), phir ITAT. Aur ITAT aakhri jagah hai jahan TATHYA dekhe jaate hain.
ReadPehla sawaal ye nahi ki partner ne kya kiya — pehla sawaal ye hai ki jhagda kiska hai. Company kanoon ki nazar me ALAG VYAKTI hai. s.241/244 ka darwaza, aur IBC vasooli ka zariya nahi hai.
ReadYahan koi aapko BULATA nahi — bank bina adalat ke kabza leta hai. s.13(2) ke 60 din, phir s.13(4) par **45 din** me khud DRT jaana padta hai. Civil court band hai (s.34). Appeal par 50% jama.
ReadYe adalat jaan-boojh kar alag banayi gayi — s.13 kehti hai advocate rakhna aapka HAQ tak nahi, s.9 pehle samjhauta karana adalat ka kartavya hai, s.14 me saboot ke niyam dheele hain, aur CONSENT wale decree par appeal HOTI HI NAHI.
ReadMuawza dalil se nahi, HISAAB se banta hai — aur 2019 ke baad s.166(3) ne sirf CHHE MAHINE de rakhe hain (pehle koi seema thi hi nahi). Do raaste, income proof, disability, hit-and-run, award ki vasooli.
ReadYe ek hi forum hai jo jaan-boojh kar banaya gaya hai ki aap KHUD lad sakein — aur isi wajah se log haarte hain. Commercial purpose ka jaal, 2 saal ki seema, ab apne sheher me file karo, aur appeal par 50% jama.
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