Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023

The Rajasthan High Court granted anticipatory bail to a woman sought to be added as an accused in the 2018 Supervisor (Women Empowerment) recruitment paper leak case. She was not named in the FIR, in witness statements or in two charge-sheets, and the material against her rested on a chain of disclosures, which cannot by itself justify depriving a person of liberty (paras 5-5.4, 6).

The Supreme Court held that a victim's appeal against an acquittal recorded by a Magistrate lies to the Sessions Court, not the High Court. Under the proviso to Section 413 of the BNSS, a victim's appeal lies to the court that ordinarily hears appeals against convictions by the trial court, and Section 415(3) sends appeals from a Magistrate's conviction to the Court of Session. The Court upheld the High Court's order and allowed the petitioner to appeal to the Sessions Court within one month (paras 10-13).

The Supreme Court held that when an accused is released because the police breached Article 22(1), by not giving written grounds of arrest, or Article 22(2), by not producing him before a Magistrate within 24 hours, the same police cannot re-arrest him on their own. Re-arrest needs the Magistrate's permission on an application made after furnishing the grounds, explaining the lapse and endorsed by a superior officer. The Court set aside the High Court's contrary order (paras 24-25, 36, 38).

The Rajasthan High Court dismissed a second bail application in a murder case filed soon after the first was rejected on merits, noting that the earlier dismissal was not disclosed. A successive application must show a substantial change in circumstances or new material; it cannot be used to re-argue the same case (paras 2-8).

The Rajasthan High Court upheld a Pali magistrate's order allowing the complainant in a cheque dishonour case to exhibit a bank return memo bearing the bank's seal and signature as Exhibit-9, although an unsigned computer-generated memo had already been marked Exhibit-2. This corrected an inadvertent error and did not fill a lacuna (para 8.4). Marking a document as an exhibit is not proof of it, and the accused can still cross-examine and object to its admissibility (paras 9.3, 12).

The Madras High Court at Madurai granted bail to an air passenger after eight vacuum-sealed packets of suspected hydroponic weed were allegedly found under false bottoms in his trolley bags at Trichy airport (paras 2, 6). It extracted its own order of 02.09.2026, which had refused to treat hydroponic weed as commercial quantity on an untested THC claim, and weighed the quantity, the pending chemical analysis report, his custody and the absence of previous cases (paras 5-6).

A Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court granted interim bail from 11.09.2026 to 21.12.2026 to a 76-year-old accused in a money-laundering case linked to alleged drug smuggling, on medical grounds and after more than five years in custody (paras 21-24). The rigours of Section 45 of the PMLA, it held, cannot keep in prison a person so unfit that treatment inside becomes a mere formality (para 17).

The Punjab and Haryana High Court granted regular bail to a petitioner accused of conniving with a co-accused to get multiple cases registered in Punjab and Delhi on false allegations of rape to extort money (para 2). It relied on about two years and five months in custody, bail to both co-accused, offences triable by a Magistrate and only 2 of 30 witnesses examined (para 8). Before parting, it said a national-level portal of antecedents in repeated-complaint cases needed consideration (para 9).

The Punjab and Haryana High Court refused regular bail to a man accused under the Official Secrets Act and Section 152 BNS of sharing photographs of the Air Force Station, Ambala Cantt, including Rafale jets, with a woman whose numbers operated from Pakistan (paras 1-2, 9). Even if it was a honey trap, the Court said, there was no occasion to share such photographs with an unknown person (para 6).

The Madras High Court answered a death reference against the prosecution and acquitted a man sentenced to death under the POCSO Act for alleged aggravated penetrative sexual assault on five children (paras 1, 30). It found material improvements and signs of tutoring in the children's evidence, no medical corroboration, and a trial that denied him effective legal representation (paras 17, 21, 28). Compensation paid to the children need not be recovered (para 29).

The Madras High Court at Madurai granted bail to a man accused of bringing 5.20 kg of suspected hydroponic weed/ganja from Phuket through Kuala Lumpur to Trichy airport (paras 1-2, 12). With no chemical analysis report on record, it refused to treat the seizure as commercial quantity on the prosecution's THC argument; treated as ganja, the limit is 20 kg, so the Section 37 embargo was not applied at the bail stage (paras 8-10).

The Madras High Court quashed the case against fourteen men accused of gathering at Gudalur and raising slogans in support of the Palestinian people, holding that an assembly is unlawful only when its common object falls within the statutory categories, such as using criminal force or committing an offence (paras 7-8). The charge sheet showed no criminal force and no ingredients of wrongful restraint under Section 126(2) BNS (para 8).