Section 193 BNSS governs the police report filed on completion of an investigation, and it carries exactly one express deadline: two months, and only for offences under sections 64 to 68, 70 and 71 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 and sections 4, 6, 8 and 10 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. That two-month period runs from the date the information was recorded by the officer in charge of the police station. The sixty and ninety day figures most readers arrive looking for are not in Section 193 at all. They sit in Section 187(3) of the BNSS, they cap how long an accused may be detained while the investigation continues, and their breach is what produces the right to default bail.
This article sets out how the courts have interpreted Section 193 BNSS, subsection by subsection, from the Supreme Court down.
Start with the vocabulary, because it causes half the confusion. Section 193 never uses the word “chargesheet”; the statute says “report”. And BNSS 173 is a different provision altogether, dealing with the registration of first information, so a reader who searches “Section 173” needs to say which code they mean. The police report that was Section 173 of the CrPC is Section 193 of the BNSS.
Two readers land on this page. One is a practitioner or a student checking the current judicial position on the section, and the other is a complainant whose case has sat with the police for a year with nothing filed. The law reads differently depending on which of those you are, and the second half of this article is written for the second reader.
Section 193 BNSS requires investigation to be completed without unnecessary delay, and fixes a two-month outer limit only for specified sexual offences, running from the date the information was recorded. The sixty and ninety day periods belong to Section 187(3) BNSS, run from first remand, and are what trigger default bail. Missing the Section 193 timeline does not.
Which section sets the sixty and ninety day limits, Section 187 or Section 193 BNSS?
The sixty and ninety day limits are set by Section 187 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, not by Section 193 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. Section 187(3) is the maximum-detention provision, the successor to Section 167(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, and it governs how long a person may be held in custody while the investigation continues. Section 193 does a different job. It tells the officer in charge what to do once the investigation is over, and it imposes a general duty to finish without unnecessary delay.
That distinction decides which application you file and when you file it. And getting it wrong cuts both ways: you either move a bail application on a section that confers no bail right, or you wait for a deadline that was never going to arrive.
INFOGRAPHIC-01: Two Different Clocks: Section 187(3) BNSS and Section 193(2) BNSS
| What is being compared | Section 187(3) BNSS | Section 193(2) BNSS |
|---|---|---|
| What the provision governs | Maximum period of detention during investigation | Duty to complete the investigation |
| The period | Ninety days, or sixty days, depending on the offence | Two months |
| When the clock starts | From first remand | From the date the information was recorded by the officer in charge of the police station |
| Which offences | Ninety days for offences punishable with death, imprisonment for life, or ten years or more; sixty days for any other offence | Only BNS sections 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70 and 71, and POCSO sections 4, 6, 8 and 10 |
| Who it protects | The accused in custody | The victim or the informant |
| What happens on breach | The right to default bail arises | No default bail right; the remedy is a direction to the investigating agency |
The word “sixty” does not appear anywhere in Section 193 of the BNSS. That single fact settles most of the argument, and you can check it against the bare Act in under a minute.
So why is the error everywhere? Because the two provisions sit close together in the same chapter, both talk about investigation, and one of them carries a consequence dramatic enough (release from custody) that it gets attached to whichever number a writer happens to be looking at.
The result is that Section 193 gets described, repeatedly and confidently, as imposing a ninety day deadline for serious offences and a sixty day deadline for everything else. It does not. Neither figure is in the section, and neither is the sentence-length threshold that usually travels with them.
Here’s what that actually looks like in practice. An accused in judicial custody on day sixty-one of a non-serious offence has a live, immediate remedy, and it is an application under Section 187(3). A complainant in month four of a stalled theft investigation has no deadline to point to under Section 193 at all, because Section 193(2) does not cover theft, and must argue delay under Section 193(1) instead. Two readers, two provisions, and no overlap between them.
LawSikho has a separate treatment of the charge sheet document itself, its format and its contents. This article stays with what the courts have said about the section.
The mistake we see most often is treating FIR registration as the starting gun for both clocks. It’s the starting gun for neither.
What does the enacted text of Section 193(2) cover?
Section 193(2) covers a closed list of sexual offences and nothing else. The enacted text reads:
“The investigation in relation to an offence under sections 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 or under sections 4, 6, 8 or section 10 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 shall be completed within two months from the date on which the information was recorded by the officer in charge of the police station.”
Three things follow, and each of them is routinely misreported. The period is two months, not sixty days and not ninety. The offences are named individually, so an offence outside Section 64 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 to 68, 70 and 71 and outside Section 4 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, 6, 8 and 10 is not covered by the subsection at all (theft, cheating and hurt all sit outside it). And the clock starts when the information was recorded by the officer in charge, which is not the same event as the registration of a first information report in every case.
Everything else on timing sits in Section 193(1), which is a standard rather than a deadline: “Every investigation under this Chapter shall be completed without unnecessary delay.” That is the only timing obligation that applies to the general run of offences, and it’s the provision a complainant in an ordinary case has to work with.
Where do the sixty and ninety day figures actually come from?
They come from Section 187(3) of the BNSS, which caps detention during investigation and attaches the consequence of default bail. The Supreme Court put the point plainly in July 2026 in Shaurya Sunil Kumar Singh v. Central Bureau of Investigation, 2026 INSC 666, where an accused argued that a charge sheet was incomplete because the investigating officer had not filed the additional copies required by Section 193(8). The Court rejected that, and in doing so located the clock:
“the non-filing of additional copies of the charge-sheet under Section 193(8) would not vitiate the chargesheet/police report itself…the right to default bail arises when the chargesheet is not filed within a period of sixty or ninety days, as applicable.”
Read that sentence again with the section numbers in mind. The right arises on non-filing within sixty or ninety days, and those are the Section 187(3) periods. But the Court is not describing a Section 193 deadline. It is describing what happens when the report does not reach the magistrate inside the custody window.
The constitutional weight behind that window comes from Bikramjit Singh v. State of Punjab, (2020) 10 SCC 616, where a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the right to default bail is not merely a statutory concession but forms part of the procedure established by law under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. That’s why the sixty and ninety day figures carry a hard consequence and the Section 193 timeline does not. One is a limit on the State’s power to detain. The other is a duty owed in the conduct of an investigation.
If you need the custody half worked through in detail, how the sixty and ninety day custody clock actually runs is the page that owns it, and our sister site iPleaders covers the sixty and ninety day clock and how to apply for default bail from the application-drafting side.
The two clocks start on different dates
The Section 187(3) clock runs from first remand, and the Section 193(2) clock runs from the date the information was recorded by the officer in charge. That’s the single most consequential practical distinction on this page, and it’s the one that decides real applications.
An accused arrested on 14 October and produced before a magistrate the next day starts the custody clock on the date of that first remand, not on the date the FIR was registered, and not on the date of arrest. Counting from the wrong event by even a few days is how default bail applications get filed early and dismissed. In Govinda s/o Mudurangappa v. State of Karnataka, W.P. No. 5248 of 2026 (GM-RES), the charge sheet came in on the eighty-fourth day of judicial custody, and the eighty-fourth day mattered only because the count began where the statute says it begins.
The Section 193(2) count is different again. It attaches to the recording of the information, an act performed by the officer in charge of the police station, and it keeps running whether or not anybody is in custody. (This is why a complainant can have a live Section 193(2) point in a case where nobody has been arrested at all.) Two clocks, two start dates, and no reason to expect them to expire together.
The word “sixty” does not appear anywhere in Section 193 of the BNSS.
What is being compared
Section 187(3) BNSS
Section 193(2) BNSS
What the provision governs
Maximum period of detention during investigation
Duty to complete the investigation
The period
Ninety days, or sixty days, depending on the offence
Two months
When the clock starts
From first remand
From the date the information was recorded by the officer in charge of the police station
Which offences
Ninety days for offences punishable with death, imprisonment for life, or ten years or more; sixty days for any other offence
Only BNS sections 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70 and 71, and POCSO sections 4, 6, 8 and 10
Who it protects
The accused in custody
The victim or the informant
What happens on breach
The right to default bail arises
No default bail right; the remedy is a direction to the investigating agency
Leading authority
Shaurya Sunil Kumar Singh v. CBI, 2026 INSC 666, Supreme Court, July 2026
Govinda v. State of Karnataka, W.P. No. 5248 of 2026, Karnataka High Court, April 2026
Is the Section 193(2) timeline mandatory or a legislative exhortation?
The Karnataka High Court treated the Section 193(2) timeline as an exhortation addressed to the investigating agency rather than a provision whose breach releases the accused. The phrasing matters, because the Court did not say the language is loose. It said the opposite about the language, and then held that the consequence the accused wanted does not follow from it.
What is the practical upshot? A late investigation under Section 193 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 is a failure the State can be called to answer for, at the instance of the person the subsection protects. It’s not a key that opens the custody door.
What did the Karnataka High Court hold about default bail under Section 193(2)?
It held that breach of Section 193(2) confers no right to default bail on the accused. In Govinda s/o Mudurangappa v. State of Karnataka, W.P. No. 5248 of 2026 (GM-RES), decided in April 2026, the petitioner had been arrested on 14 October 2025 and the charge sheet was filed on 7 January 2026, the eighty-fourth day of judicial custody. He argued that Section 193(2) required completion inside its period and that statutory bail followed. The petition was dismissed, and the Court reasoned at paragraph 10:
“Section 193(2), though couched in mandatory language, operates in a distinct domain. It is a legislative exhortation to ensure alacrity in investigation, particularly in heinous offences… Yet, it does not, in its text or spirit, confer upon the accused a right to default bail upon its breach. To construe it otherwise, would render Section 187 nugatory…”
The offences the Court named at the first break are the same closed list set out above. The consequence it said must be eschewed, at the second, is the reading that would leave Section 187 with nothing left to do.
At paragraph 13 the Court added the purposive half of the reasoning, that “timelines under special statutes like the POCSO Act, are victim centric, intended to ensure swift justice, not to furnish escape routes for the accused.”
Worth flagging: this is a single judge sitting in writ jurisdiction, the judgment is roughly three months old as at July 2026, and no appellate treatment of it has been reported. Cite it as the current High Court position, not as settled law.
Does a breach of the Section 193 BNSS timeline help the accused at all?
On the verified authorities, no. No reported decision gives the accused a remedy for breach of Section 193(2), and the reasoning in Govinda runs the other way: reading a bail consequence into the subsection would make Section 187 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 redundant, which is a construction the Court expressly refused.
The only verified remedy for a missed Section 193 timeline runs at the victim’s or the complainant’s instance, and it takes the form of a direction to the investigating agency. That asymmetry is deliberate, and it’s discussed in the remedy section below. That’s as far as the authorities go, and pushing the point further would be an argument rather than a statement of the position. But there is no authority saying breach of Section 193(2) can never assist an accused in any way; there is simply no authority saying it can.
Why “directory” is not the Karnataka High Court’s word
Legal news headnotes reported Govinda as holding the timeline “directory”. The Court did not use that word in the passages quoted above. Its own formulations are that Section 193(2) is “couched in mandatory language” and operates as “a legislative exhortation”.
The difference isn’t cosmetic. “Directory” invites the reader to think the language is soft, and the Court said the language is not soft. It said the language is mandatory in form and that the consequence the accused sought does not attach to it. And if you’re citing the case in a bail matter, quote the Court, not the headline.
How did the two month rule get into Section 193(2)?
Section 173 of the CrPC as originally enacted carried no outer time limit for completing an investigation at all. Timeliness was enforced indirectly, through the custody caps in Section 167(2) of the CrPC and through judicial exhortation.
The limit arrived by amendment, and in two stages. Section 173(1A) was inserted into the CrPC by the Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Act, 2008, and set three months for investigating the rape of a child. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2018 replaced the three months with two, and widened the clause to the specified rape offences under the Indian Penal Code.
Section 193(2) of the BNSS carries that same two-month period across and attaches it to the BNS and POCSO sections instead. So the two-month rule isn’t a BNSS invention, and it didn’t arrive with the BNSS either. It has been the law since 2018.
Can the police start a further investigation on their own after filing the report?
No. Under Section 193 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, the proviso to Section 193(9) puts the trial court’s permission ahead of any further investigation conducted during the trial, and the Supreme Court has confirmed that the police must ask before they act. That permission gate is a break from the old code: Section 173(8) of the CrPC carried no such requirement on its face, and an agency could resume on its own initiative.
The controlling recent authority is Pramod Kumar v. State of U.P., 2026 INSC 120, decided on 4 February 2026. The Supreme Court, construing Section 173(8) of the CrPC alongside its BNSS successor Section 193(9), held at paragraph 26 that “the police ought to follow the procedure of seeking permission from the Court to conduct ‘further investigation.'” The Court went on to place that discretion with the magistrate or the court concerned, and to require the agency to apply for permission before conducting further investigation. It is a CrPC prosecution on its facts, and the Court’s own bridging of the two codes is what makes it load-bearing here.
The High Court position had already moved the same way. In Gajendra Singh Shekhawat v. State of Rajasthan, 2024:RJ-JD:39977, decided on 25 September 2024, the Rajasthan High Court observed at paragraph 7 that “in any case, where a report under section 193(3) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) has already been filed against the prime accused, no further investigation can be carried out without the permission of the learned trial court, in view of Section 193(9) of BNSS”. That observation sits close to the line between ratio and obiter, since the petitioner there was found not to be an accused, so treat it as the Rajasthan High Court’s construction rather than as settled law on its own strength.
Where does this sit in the life of a case? Between the filing of the report and the end of evidence, which is where the police report sits in the trial sequence more precisely than most summaries admit.
What permission does the Section 193(9) proviso require?
It requires the permission of the court trying the case, obtained before the further investigation is conducted. The proviso reads:
“further investigation during the trial may be conducted with the permission of the Court trying the case and the same shall be completed within a period of ninety days which may be extended with the permission of the Court”
Two separate permissions are built into that single sentence. The first is permission to begin. The second is permission to run past ninety days. But an agency that obtained the first and assumed the second hasn’t complied with the proviso.
The judicial foundation for the court’s supervisory role predates the BNSS. In Vinubhai Haribhai Malaviya v. State of Gujarat, AIR 2019 SC 5233, the Supreme Court held at paragraph 23 that a magistrate’s powers under the investigation-direction provision are “very wide, for it is this judicial authority that must be satisfied that a proper investigation by the police takes place”, and that Article 21 of the Constitution of India carries with it all powers necessary, incidental or implied, to ensure a proper investigation, including ordering further investigation after the report is received. At paragraph 51 the Court put the practical case for it: “It will be a travesty of justice, if the court cannot be permitted to direct ‘further investigation’ to clear its doubt and to order the investigating agency to further substantiate its charge-sheet.”
How long can a further investigation run?
Ninety days, extendable only with the permission of the court. That cap is judicially confirmed. In Yash Mishra v. State of NCT of Delhi, 2025:DHC:7325-DB, a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court held at paragraph 13 that “the power to conduct further investigation as conferred on the investigating agencies under Section 193(9) is not unfettered; the proviso appended thereto contains adequate safeguards on the arbitrary use of the power for further investigation, for the reason that further investigation during trial can be conducted only with the permission of the Court…to be completed within 90 days, which, though, is extendable”.
The permission gate and the ninety-day cap are what the Court relied on to hold the power constitutionally sound. Strip either out and the reasoning does not survive.
No reported decision yet tells us what justifies an extension. That’s the open question on this proviso, and the verified authorities go no further.
Section 193(9) and Section 187(3) sit in different fields
The Delhi High Court has held exactly that. The vires of Section 193(9) were challenged on the footing that it lets an agency file an incomplete report, continue under the label of further investigation, and defeat the accused’s right to default bail under Section 187(3). The Division Bench rejected the challenge and dismissed the writ petition, holding at paragraph 14 that the two provisions “operate in different fields” and that Section 193(9) does not act as a camouflage for the default bail right.
That holding matters beyond its own facts, because it’s a genuine BNSS decision rather than a CrPC case carried across. It confirms the separation this article started with, from a Division Bench, on a direct constitutional challenge.
There’s a second-order consequence worth naming. If attacking delay no longer wins bail, the value in defence practice moves to scrutinising whether the report filed was complete on its own terms. And that’s a documentary argument, built on what the report contains and what it omits, not a calendar argument.
Three kinds of investigation can follow a Section 193 BNSS report
Further investigation, re-investigation and fresh or de novo investigation are three different things, and lay users treat them as synonyms. Does the distinction matter outside a classroom? It decides who can order the exercise, whether the original report survives it, and whether the police can move at all without a judicial order.
Before the distinctions, one piece of housekeeping that trips up almost every reader. Section 173 of the BNSS is FIR registration under Section 173 of the BNSS, the successor to Section 154 of the CrPC. Section 173 of the CrPC was the police report, and its successor is Section 193 of the BNSS.
Two provisions numbered 173, in two different codes, doing two unrelated jobs. And name the code every time you cite the number, in a petition and in a note to a client alike.
INFOGRAPHIC-03: Further, Re- and Fresh Investigation After a Section 193 BNSS Report
| What is being compared | Further investigation | Re-investigation | Fresh or de novo investigation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who can order it | The court trying the case, on the agency’s application; a Magistrate may also direct it | No legislative mandate empowers a Magistrate to order it | Only a court empowered to pass such an order, by a definite order recording reasons |
| Court permission needed | Yes, under the proviso to Section 193(9) BNSS. The police cannot start on their own | Not available on a Magistrate’s direction | Yes, and the order must state that the previous investigation cannot be acted upon |
| Effect on the original report | Supplements it. It does not wipe out the initial investigation | Not applicable | Replaces the earlier investigation |
| Time limit | Ninety days, extendable only with the permission of the court | Not applicable | No period prescribed in Section 193 BNSS |
What does a further investigation add to the original report?
It adds evidence, and it leaves the earlier investigation standing. The Supreme Court defined the exercise in Vinay Tyagi v. Irshad Ali, (2013) 5 SCC 762 at paragraph 15: “‘Further investigation’ is where the Investigating Officer obtains further oral or documentary evidence after the final report has been filed before the Court in terms of Section 173(8).” That was said of the CrPC, and Section 193(9) of the BNSS reproduces the same structure with a permission gate bolted on.
The Court added, in the same paragraph, that “Another significant feature of further investigation is that it does not have the effect of wiping out directly or impliedly the initial investigation conducted by the investigating agency.” This is the cleanest available explanation of why a supplementary report supplements rather than replaces, and it’s worth having at hand when the other side argues that a later report supersedes an earlier one.
Who can order a fresh or de novo investigation?
Only a court, and only by a specific order that says why. Vinay Tyagi again, at paragraph 16: “In the case of a ‘fresh investigation’, ‘reinvestigation’ or ‘de novo investigation’ there has to be a definite order of the court. The order of the Court unambiguously should state as to whether the previous investigation, for reasons to be recorded, is incapable of being acted upon.”
The prohibition on the agency’s side is stated in the Court’s conclusions at paragraph 40: “No investigating agency is empowered to conduct a ‘fresh’, ‘de novo’ or ‘re-investigation’ in relation to the offence for which it has already filed a report in terms of Section 173(2) of the Code. It is only upon the orders of the higher courts empowered to pass such orders that aforesaid investigation can be conducted.” But a complainant who wants the whole exercise redone is therefore not asking the police for anything. They’re asking a court, and they need to show why the earlier investigation cannot be acted upon at all.
The Magistrate’s options on a closure report
The Punjab and Haryana High Court set out three, in Pawan Kharbanda v. State of Punjab, 2025:PHHC:013209, decided on 29 January 2025. On a cancellation report the Magistrate may accept it and drop proceedings, or disagree with it, take cognizance and issue process, or direct further investigation. The Court also observed that re-investigation has no legislative mandate behind it in criminal matters, and that indiscriminate resort to Sections 175 and 193 of the BNSS can lead to unnecessary hardship, which is why judicial oversight matters at this stage.
Note what is absent from the list. Ordering the police to start over is not one of the three, and neither is directing further investigation simply because the complainant is unhappy with the outcome. In practice this is where protest petitions get argued badly, by asking for a remedy the Magistrate has no power to give instead of the one they do.
Section 193(9) BNSS replaced the self-starting practice under Section 173(8) CrPC with a trial court permission gate.
What is being compared
Further investigation
Re-investigation
Fresh or de novo investigation
Who can order it
The court trying the case, on the investigating agency’s application; a Magistrate may also direct it
No legislative mandate empowers a Magistrate to order it
Only a court empowered to pass such an order, by a definite order recording reasons
Court permission needed
Yes, under the proviso to Section 193(9) BNSS. The police cannot start on their own
Not available on a Magistrate’s direction
Yes, and the order must state that the previous investigation cannot be acted upon
Effect on the original report
Supplements it. It does not wipe out the initial investigation
Not applicable
Replaces the earlier investigation
Time limit
Ninety days, extendable only with the permission of the court
Not applicable
No period prescribed in Section 193 BNSS
Authority
Pramod Kumar v. State of U.P., 2026 INSC 120; Vinay Tyagi v. Irshad Ali, (2013) 5 SCC 762
Pawan Kharbanda v. State of Punjab, 2025:PHHC:013209
Vinay Tyagi v. Irshad Ali, (2013) 5 SCC 762
Must the police tell the informant how the investigation is going?
Yes. Section 193(3)(ii) of the BNSS requires the police officer to inform the progress of the investigation within ninety days, and this is new law with no equivalent in Section 173(2) of the CrPC.
The subsection sits inside Section 193 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, among the clauses that govern what the officer does on completion, and the drafting is unusually generous about method: the update may be sent by any means, electronic communication included. The obligation is on the officer, not on the complainant to chase.
There’s a second duty in the very next clause, and it’s a different duty owed to a different person. Most explainers merge them. They shouldn’t be merged, and reading them together is the fastest way to see what the BNSS actually added.
The ninety day progress update under Section 193(3)(ii)
The text reads: “the police officer shall, within a period of ninety days, inform the progress of the investigation by any means including through electronic communication to the informant or the victim”.
Three points do the work here. The recipient is the informant or the victim, which matters where the person who reported the offence is not the person it was committed against. The method is open, so an email or a message satisfies it and the officer cannot plead the absence of a prescribed form. And the ninety days attaches to informing progress of the investigation, not to the filing of a charge sheet.
An update is therefore due at ninety days whether or not the investigation is anywhere near complete.
How is the action taken communication under Section 193(3)(iii) different?
It goes to a narrower recipient, carries different content, and is not new. The text reads: “the officer shall also communicate, in such manner as the State Government may, by rules, provide, the action taken by him, to the person, if any, by whom the information relating to the commission of the offence was first given”.
| Section 193(3)(ii) | Section 193(3)(iii) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who receives it | The informant or the victim | The first informant only |
| What is communicated | The progress of the investigation | The action taken by the officer |
| Timing | Within ninety days | Not fixed in the subsection |
| Method | Any means, including electronic communication | As the State Government prescribes by rules |
| New under the BNSS? | Yes, no CrPC 173(2) equivalent | No, it is the survivor of Section 173(2)(ii) of the CrPC |
The practical reality is that the (iii) duty is the older one, carried across from Section 173(2)(ii) of the CrPC and performed in whatever form the state rules require, while the (ii) duty arrived only with the BNSS. But if you’re pleading non-compliance, plead the correct clause. A petition that complains about a missing ninety-day progress update but cites the action-taken clause invites a technical answer.
What can you do if the police never send the update?
Raise it in writing with the station, and if that fails, put it before the Magistrate alongside whatever else you’re asking for. The obligation has already attracted institutional enforcement: in November 2024 the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed the Directors General of Police of Punjab and Haryana and of the Union Territory of Chandigarh to issue instructions for scrupulous compliance with Section 193(3) of the BNSS by investigating officers, and to file a compliance report. That direction was reported by LiveLaw and by The Tribune.
Why does an administrative direction to police chiefs matter to an individual complainant? Because it converts a paper right into a documented compliance expectation, and a station that has been told by its own DGP to comply is answerable internally as well as judicially.
Non-intimation is likely to become a standard pleaded ground alongside investigation delay rather than a stand-alone petition. So the sensible drafting posture today is to plead it as one limb of a delay petition, not as the whole case.
Who can see the police report once it is filed?
Not the public at large, on the current Supreme Court authority. In Saurav Das v. Union of India, 2023 SCC OnLine SC 58, decided on 20 January 2023, the Court refused a direction requiring all States to publish copies of charge sheets on their websites, holding at paragraph 7 that the petitioner was “not entitled to the relief as prayed in the present petition namely directing all the States to put on their websites the copies of all the chargesheets/challans filed under Section 173 of the Cr.P.C.” It also held at paragraph 5 that a copy of the charge sheet with its accompanying documents cannot be said to be a public document within Section 74 of the Evidence Act.
Read that in its context, which is public access. The Court distinguished the earlier FIR-upload directions on the ground that those ran “in favour of the accused, which cannot be stretch to the public at large so far as the chargesheets are concerned”. The accused’s own statutory right to be supplied a copy, under Section 230 of the BNSS and the additional-copies obligation in Section 193(8), is untouched by that ruling. For the procedure for obtaining your own copy, see the charge sheet guide linked earlier in this article.
What can you do if the police miss the Section 193 BNSS timeline?
You escalate, and the relief you’re realistically seeking is a direction to finish the investigation, not a penalty against the police and not the collapse of the case. That’s the honest answer to the most common real-world question on this section, and it’s the answer the search results are worst at giving.
A High Court will give that direction where an investigation has genuinely stalled. In Pushpavalli @ Pushbam v. Superintendent of Police, 2025:MHC:2904, on 8 December 2025, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court dealt with a murder FIR registered on 11 January 2024 on which no final report had been filed almost two years later. The Court directed the police to complete the investigation and file the final report before the jurisdictional court within four weeks, noting that no reasons for the delay had been recorded in writing or intimated to the Magistrate, and preserving the petitioner’s remedies if the directions were breached.
Four weeks, after twenty-three months of nothing. That’s the shape of the relief available, and it’s worth having in mind before deciding how much of a client’s money to spend getting there.
Does a late report get the case dismissed or the accused acquitted?
No. A missed timeline under Section 193(1) or Section 193(2) of the BNSS carries no automatic consequence for the prosecution. The case is not dismissed, the accused is not acquitted, and the offence does not become unprosecutable. What the delay produces is a ground for a direction, and in an extreme case a ground for the High Court to intervene, which is a different thing from a verdict.
The contrast with Section 187 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 is the whole point. There, the consequence is real, immediate and statutory: once the custody period expires without the report being filed, the right to default bail arises, and it arises whether or not anyone thinks the delay was reasonable. Section 193 has no equivalent switch.
So why does the SERP imply otherwise? Largely because the two provisions get merged, and the consequence attached to one gets reported as if it belonged to both. A complainant who is told their case will be thrown out is being frightened for no reason. An accused who is told a late charge sheet wins an acquittal is being set up for a bad application.
The remedy ladder, from the station house officer upward
INFOGRAPHIC-02: Remedy Ladder When the Police Have Not Filed the Report
- Written reminder to the station house officer. Creates a dated record that the delay was raised, which every later step relies on.
- Application to the Superintendent of Police. Escalation within the police hierarchy before any court is approached.
- Application to the Magistrate under Section 175(3) of the BNSS. Asks the Magistrate to direct an investigation where the police have not acted.
- Protest petition if a closure report is filed. The Magistrate may accept the report, disagree and take cognizance, or direct further investigation.
- Private complaint. An independent route to cognizance that does not depend on the police report.
- Writ petition seeking a time-bound direction. In Pushpavalli, the Madras High Court gave the police four weeks to file the final report.
And each rung builds the record for the next one. A writ petition that opens with “the police have done nothing” is weaker than one that annexes a dated reminder, a dated escalation to the Superintendent, and the absence of any ninety-day progress update. (The paper trail is doing more work in these petitions than the legal argument.)
How far can delay itself become a ground to quash?
Far enough that the Supreme Court has made judicial scrutiny of it compulsory. In Robert Lalchungnunga Chongthu v. State of Bihar, 2025 INSC 1339, decided on 20 November 2025, the Court directed at paragraph 21(ii) that where a court finds “there is a large gap between the first information report and the culminating chargesheet, it is bound to seek an explanation from the investigating agency and satisfy itself to the propriety of the explanation so furnished.”
The word doing the work is “bound”. Explaining an eleven-year gap is not something the court may ask for at its discretion; it is something the court must ask for.
The Court also directed, at paragraph 21(iii), that investigations cannot continue endlessly and that an accused may approach the High Court seeking an update on the investigation or, in a proper case, quashing. But that is a CrPC-era prosecution, and the relief runs on the accused’s side, so read it as the governing principle on investigative delay carried into the BNSS regime rather than as a route for a complainant to force a charge sheet. Where quashing is the object, quashing petitions under Section 528 of the BNSS is the adjacent remedy to read next.
There’s a wider consequence here that hasn’t been picked up yet. Section 193(3)(ii), read with Section 360 of the BNSS, which bars a court from allowing withdrawal from a prosecution without first hearing the victim, gives complainant-side counsel a statutory footing the CrPC never offered. A junior advocate who learns to work the progress-update duty and the victim’s hearing right together has a differentiated offering, not a niche hobby.
A missed Section 193 BNSS timeline does not by itself get a case dismissed or an accused acquitted.
Frequently asked questions on Section 193 BNSS
1. What is Section 193 of the BNSS?
Section 193 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 governs the police report filed on completion of an investigation. It sets the duty to investigate without unnecessary delay, the report’s contents, the duties owed to the informant, and further investigation.
2. What does Section 193 BNSS say about investigation time limits?
Section 193(1) requires every investigation to be completed without unnecessary delay. Section 193(2) adds one outer limit of two months, and only for specified sexual offences under the BNS and POCSO. No other time limit appears in the section.
3. What is the time limit for filing a charge sheet in a POCSO case?
For offences under sections 4, 6, 8 and 10 of the POCSO Act, Section 193(2) BNSS requires the investigation to be completed within two months from the date the information was recorded by the officer in charge of the police station.
4. What is the BNSS equivalent of Section 173 CrPC?
Section 193 of the BNSS. Section 173 of the CrPC was the police report on completion of investigation, and Section 193 of the BNSS replaced it. Section 173 of the BNSS is a different provision, dealing with the registration of information about an offence.
5. How long do the police have to complete an investigation under Section 193 BNSS?
There is no general deadline. Section 193(1) requires completion without unnecessary delay, and only the specified sexual offences in Section 193(2) carry a fixed two-month period. Everything else is governed by the delay standard alone.
6. What is the time limit for the police to file a charge sheet after an FIR?
Section 193 BNSS sets no time limit measured from FIR registration. The two-month period in Section 193(2) runs from when the information was recorded, and the sixty and ninety day custody periods in Section 187(3) run from first remand.
7. What happens if the charge sheet is not filed within sixty days?
Where the accused is in custody, the sixty-day period in Section 187(3) BNSS expiring without the report being filed gives rise to the right to default bail. That consequence comes from Section 187(3), not from Section 193.
8. Is default bail automatic once the deadline passes?
The right arises on expiry of the applicable period without the report being filed, but it has to be claimed. In Shaurya Sunil Kumar Singh (2026), the Supreme Court treated a compliant charge sheet filed within the period as answering the claim.
9. The police have not filed the charge sheet for two years. What can I do?
Escalate in writing to the station house officer and the Superintendent of Police, then apply to the Magistrate under Section 175(3) BNSS, and finally seek a time-bound direction from the High Court. Courts do grant four-week completion directions.
10. Can a police report be filed electronically with the Magistrate under the BNSS?
Yes. Electronic forwarding of the report is one of the additions the BNSS made to the old Section 173 CrPC scheme. The mechanics of electronic filing are covered in our charge sheet guide.
11. What do I do after a closure report has been filed?
File a protest petition. On a cancellation report the Magistrate may accept it and drop proceedings, disagree and take cognizance and issue process, or direct further investigation. A private complaint remains available as a separate route.
12. Can the police add charges in the charge sheet that were not in the FIR?
The report states whether an offence appears to have been committed and by whom, so it need not mirror the FIR. An FIR sets an investigation in motion; it does not fix the offences the report may allege.
13. Can I download a charge sheet online?
Not as a member of the public. In Saurav Das (2023), the Supreme Court refused to direct States to publish charge sheets on their websites. An accused person’s own right to a copy under Section 230 BNSS is unaffected.
14. Is BNSS Section 173 the same as CrPC Section 173?
No, and this is the most common numbering error on the topic. Section 173 of the BNSS deals with information about offences and their registration. Section 173 of the CrPC was the police report, which is now Section 193 of the BNSS.
15. What is the difference between a final report and a charge sheet?
Section 193 BNSS uses neither term; the statute says “report”. Both labels are matters of usage rather than statutory definition, so nothing turns on which one a police station or a court happens to use.
16. What is the difference between a supplementary charge sheet and the original charge sheet under the BNSS?
A supplementary report follows a further investigation and adds to the record. In Vinay Tyagi, the Supreme Court held that further investigation does not wipe out the initial investigation, so the original report stands.
17. Can the police conduct a re-investigation when further investigation was ordered?
No. In Vinay Tyagi, the Supreme Court held that no investigating agency may conduct a fresh, de novo or re-investigation on its own, and that it takes a definite order of a court empowered to pass one.
18. What is the difference between Section 193(3)(ii) and Section 193(3)(iii) BNSS?
Clause (ii) requires a ninety-day progress update to the informant or the victim, by any means including electronic communication. Clause (iii) requires communication of the action taken, to the first informant only, as state rules prescribe.
References
Case Law
- Bikramjit Singh v. State of Punjab, (2020) 10 SCC 616. Criminal Appeal No. 667 of 2020; Supreme Court of India (three-judge bench), 12 October 2020
- Gajendra Singh Shekhawat v. State of Rajasthan, 2024:RJ-JD:39977. S.B. Criminal Misc. Petition No. 1375/2023; 2024 SCC OnLine Raj 2886; Rajasthan High Court, 25 September 2024
- Govinda s/o Mudurangappa v. State of Karnataka, W.P. No. 5248 of 2026 (GM-RES). High Court of Karnataka, April 2026
- Pawan Kharbanda v. State of Punjab, 2025:PHHC:013209. Punjab and Haryana High Court, 29 January 2025
- Pramod Kumar v. State of U.P., 2026 INSC 120. Arising out of SLP (Crl.) No. 350 of 2024; Supreme Court of India, 4 February 2026
- Pushpavalli @ Pushbam v. Superintendent of Police, 2025:MHC:2904. Crl.O.P.(MD) No. 982 of 2025; High Court of Madras (Madurai Bench), 8 December 2025
- Robert Lalchungnunga Chongthu v. State of Bihar, 2025 INSC 1339. 2025 LiveLaw (SC) 1128; Supreme Court of India, 20 November 2025
- Saurav Das v. Union of India, 2023 SCC OnLine SC 58. Writ Petition (Civil) No. 1126 of 2022; Supreme Court of India, 20 January 2023
- Shaurya Sunil Kumar Singh v. Central Bureau of Investigation, 2026 INSC 666. Arising out of SLP (Crl.) No. 4333 of 2026; Supreme Court of India, July 2026
- Vinay Tyagi v. Irshad Ali, (2013) 5 SCC 762. Supreme Court of India, 13 December 2012
- Vinubhai Haribhai Malaviya v. State of Gujarat, AIR 2019 SC 5233. 2019 SCC OnLine SC 1346; Criminal Appeal Nos. 478-479 of 2017; Supreme Court of India, 16 October 2019
- Yash Mishra v. State of NCT of Delhi, 2025:DHC:7325-DB. W.P.(CRL) 3101/2024; High Court of Delhi (Division Bench), 27 August 2025
Statutes
- Indian Evidence Act, 1872. Section cited: 74
- Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. Sections cited: 154, 167, 173
- Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012. Sections cited: 4, 6, 8, 10
- Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. Sections cited: 173, 175, 187, 193, 230, 360, 528
- Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. Sections cited: 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific legal guidance, consult a qualified legal professional.
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