The law on bail and arrest — anticipatory bail, default (statutory) bail, the safeguards around arrest under Article 22 and the BNSS, and the special bail regimes under the PMLA and UAPA. Close digests of the judgments that govern when liberty must be granted and when custody is justified.
On 9 June 2026 the Supreme Court held that a member of the Central Armed Police Forces, including the BSF, may invoke the Delhi High Court's writ jurisdiction under Article 226(1) in a service matter on the strength of the situs of the Union of India and the force headquarters in Delhi, notwithstanding that the cause of action arose outside that High Court's territory. The doctrine of forum non conveniens, the Court held, will rarely apply where a constitutional remedy is pursued under clause (1) of Article 226.
In a cross-border custody dispute over two minor sons, the Supreme Court set aside the High Court's 'welfare alone' approach. The Court held that while the child's welfare is paramount, financial capacity, standard of living, comfort and education of the children — and the conduct of the parents — are all relevant. The matter was remanded for fresh consideration.
The Supreme Court held that psychological or psychiatric evaluation of children in custody and visitation disputes is not barred, but is permissible only on demonstrable necessity, with minimum intrusion, institutional neutrality and proportionality, the child's welfare paramount. Courts must distinguish therapeutic care from adversarial evaluation and guard against parental-alienation dynamics.
A two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that an accused's wish to seek medical treatment abroad under Article 21 is not absolute and must yield to the complainant's right to a speedy trial where comparable facilities exist in India. A digest of the facts, the balancing test, and why the High Court's permission to travel was set aside.
The Supreme Court partly allowed an electricity-company clerk's appeal, holding that once a defective departmental inquiry is set aside and misconduct is later proved on fresh evidence, the disciplinary authority cannot mechanically fall back on the old, pre-remand show-cause notice and reimpose dismissal — it must independently apply its mind to the quantum of punishment. A digest of the facts, the holding on proportionality and natural justice, and what it means for service-law practice.
In January 2025 the Karnataka High Court rejected an application to return a vessel-recovery petition to the Commercial Court, holding that maritime claims under the Admiralty (Jurisdiction and Settlement of Maritime Claims) Act 2017 belong to the High Court's admiralty side. A digest of the facts, the forum question, and the lex specialis reasoning.
In 2016 a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court accepted the Justice R.M. Lodha Committee's recommendations and directed the BCCI to implement sweeping structural reforms. A digest of the two-judgment litigation born of the 2013 IPL betting scandal, the holding that the Board performs public functions amenable to Article 226, and how several reforms were later relaxed.
In 1992 a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court held that India's High Courts possess inherent, unlimited admiralty jurisdiction — not a power confined to obsolete colonial English statutes. A digest of the arrest of m.v. Elisabeth at Visakhapatnam, the source of that jurisdiction, and the road to the Admiralty Act, 2017.
The Supreme Court's 1994 ruling that the power to arrest and the justification for using it are two different things — and that an arrested person is entitled to have a relative or friend told. A close digest of the safeguards that prefigured D.K. Basu.
The Supreme Court holds that Section 43-D(5) UAPA bows to Article 21, that prolonged pre-trial detention with trial delay defeats the statutory bar, and that a co-equal Bench cannot depart from Najeeb.
On 1 November 1995, a three-judge Bench restated the limited scope of judicial review of departmental discipline — review of the manner of decision, not an appeal on merits — and confined interference with the quantum of punishment to penalties that shock the conscience of the court.
On 8 January 2025, the Telangana High Court reaffirmed in the BNS era that a parent who is a natural guardian taking the child from the other parent is not kidnapping under Section 137(2) BNS, and that custody disputes belong before the family court.
The Patna High Court held that where the ED files its prosecution complaint without arresting the accused during investigation, the power to arrest under Section 19 PMLA does not survive cognizance — applying Tarsem Lal.
The Jharkhand High Court granted regular bail in a money-laundering case, finding the Section 45 PMLA twin conditions satisfied — there was reason to believe the petitioner was not guilty and unlikely to reoffend on bail.
On 13 August 2024, a two-judge bench granted bail to a UAPA accused, holding that 'bail is the rule, jail is the exception' holds good even under stringent special statutes, and that the PFI is not a First-Schedule terrorist organisation.
On 3 July 2024, a two-judge bench held that where the State cannot ensure a speedy trial, it cannot oppose bail by pleading the seriousness of the offence, and that the Watali standard is no bar to bail where prolonged incarceration meets an interminable trial.
On 9 August 2024, a two-judge bench granted bail to Manish Sisodia in both the ED and CBI Excise Policy cases, holding that 17 months' incarceration with no trial in sight violated the Article 21 right to a speedy trial.
In 2017 a two-judge bench installed Family Welfare Committees to screen Section 498-A complaints; in 2018 a three-judge bench withdrew that extra-statutory machinery, restoring the Arnesh Kumar arrest discipline.
The Uttarakhand High Court suspended a POCSO conviction and granted bail, terming the trial-court verdict 'more than shocking' — this was not a case of insufficient evidence but of no evidence at all, with the victim hostile and forensics unconnected to the accused.
On 19 October 1962, a five-judge Constitution Bench laid the foundation of the 'some evidence' rule in service discipline — holding that a High Court will not upset a departmental penalty supportable on a surviving finding of substantial misconduct, even if another finding is defective.
The Orissa High Court held that before ordering investigation under Section 175(3) BNSS on a complaint of FIR non-registration, a Magistrate must consider the affidavit-supported application, make a proper inquiry, hear the police officer, and pass a reasoned order.
On 5 February 2025, the Madhya Pradesh High Court granted anticipatory bail in a rape case on condition that the accused surrender all electronic devices and social-media passwords to the investigating agency, raising sharp questions of privacy and self-incrimination.
On 7 February 2025, a two-judge bench held that communicating the grounds of arrest under Article 22(1) is a mandatory constitutional requirement, the breach of which vitiates the arrest and entitles the accused to release despite statutory bail bars.
On 26 October 1998, a two-judge bench held that the existence of an alternative statutory remedy is a rule of self-imposed discretion, not an absolute bar — and identified the recognised exceptions, including breach of natural justice, in which a writ will still lie under Article 226.
On 1 April 2026, a two-judge bench applied Mihir Shah to an NDPS arrest, holding that failure to supply written grounds of arrest before remand renders the arrest illegal even where section 37 ordinarily forecloses bail.
On 22 April 2026, the Supreme Court held that the mandatory bail conditions under section 480(3) BNSS apply only to non-bailable offences punishable with imprisonment of seven years or more, correcting widespread trial-court template practice.
On 9 January 2026, a two-judge bench held that mandating medical age-determination at the bail stage in POCSO matters is impermissible and urged the Centre to consider a 'Romeo–Juliet' clause for close-in-age consensual relationships.
On 9 July 2024, the Supreme Court struck down a Google-Maps-pin bail condition, holding that any condition letting an agency track an accused's every movement violates Article 21 privacy.
A five-judge Constitution Bench led by CJI Y.V. Chandrachud freed s.438 anticipatory bail from judge-made fetters, needing no FIR but barring blanket orders.
On 15 May 2024, the Supreme Court held that grounds of arrest must be furnished in writing at the earliest, declared the NewsClick editor's UAPA arrest illegal, and extended Pankaj Bansal beyond PMLA.
A two-judge bench laid down an A/B/C/D categorisation of offences for bail and held that breach of Sections 41 and 41A CrPC entitles the accused to bail.
A five-judge Constitution Bench held that s.438 anticipatory bail need not, as a rule, be time-bound and can survive the charge-sheet, reaffirming Sibbia.
On 26 July 2010 a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the High Court should not ordinarily entertain a writ petition under Article 226 challenging measures taken under the SARFAESI Act 2002 where the borrower has an efficacious statutory remedy before the Debts Recovery Tribunal under Section 17. The alternative-remedy rule is self-imposed judicial restraint, applied with 'greater rigour' in tax, cess and bank-recovery matters. The Bench castigated the routine grant of interim relief in such writ petitions and held that the High Court was 'wholly unjustified' in entertaining the writ at the Section 13(4) stage.
On 18 March 1997 a seven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in a unanimous judgment authored by Chief Justice A.M. Ahmadi, struck down clause 2(d) of Article 323A and clause 3(d) of Article 323B to the extent they excluded the writ jurisdiction of the High Courts and of the Supreme Court over decisions of administrative tribunals. Judicial review under Articles 32, 226 and 227 was held to be part of the basic structure of the Constitution, tribunals were repositioned as courts of first instance rather than substitutes for High Courts, and the 'alternative institutional mechanism' theory of S.P. Sampath Kumar (1987) was partly overruled.
On 26 May 2026, a Supreme Court bench of Justices K.V. Viswanathan and Vijay Bishnoi modified a life sentence to the period already undergone by the appellant — a man who had spent over twenty-three years in custody without remission. The judgment reaffirms the settled position that the imposition of a life sentence does not bar modification to a fixed-term sentence where the convict has already undergone more than 14 years of imprisonment, and reads against the architecture of remission and pre-mature release under the criminal-justice system.
On 28 August 2024, the Supreme Court granted bail to Prem Prakash — an associate of the then-Chief Minister of Jharkhand — in a Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 matter, after he had spent over a year in custody. The judgment reaffirmed the constitutional principle that 'bail is the rule, jail is the exception' in PMLA cases, held statements made by an accused while in PMLA custody to be inadmissible against him under Section 50 PMLA, and continued the post-Vijay Madanlal arc in which the Court has moderated the operation of the twin bail conditions where prolonged incarceration meets the proportionality test of liberty. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal frame, and where the PMLA bail line stands now.
On 17 February 2010, a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court — Balakrishnan CJ, Raveendran, D.K. Jain (authoring for the unanimous Bench), Sathasivam and Panchal JJ — held that the writ jurisdiction of the High Courts under Article 226 and of the Supreme Court under Article 32 is plenary and constitutional, and that a High Court may direct the Central Bureau of Investigation to investigate a cognisable offence within a State even without the State's consent under Section 6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act 1946. Judicial review is part of the basic structure; the constitutional power cannot be fettered by ordinary legislation. But the power is to be exercised sparingly and in exceptional cases, to preserve federal balance. A close reading of the judgment, the underlying Garbeta incident, and the federalism architecture the Bench was working through.
On 27 July 2022, a three-judge bench led by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar upheld substantially all the contested provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 — the arrest power under Section 19, the provisional attachment power under Section 5, the search-and-seizure architecture under Section 17, the reverse-burden provision under Section 24, and the twin bail conditions under Section 45. The judgment also held that an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) is not equivalent to an FIR and need not be supplied to the accused. A digest of the holdings, the doctrinal contributions, and the review now pending.
A year into the operation of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, the practitioner-level architecture is now substantially visible. The Supreme Court's April 2026 disposition in Narayan v. State of Madhya Pradesh settled the s.480(3) bail-condition question. Section 187(3)'s fragmentary-custody architecture has produced a competing High Court line — the Kulkarni interpretation against the Senthil Balaji line — without a definitive Article 141 resolution. The s.482 discretion has widened, on the Chhattisgarh High Court's reading. Trial in absentia under s.356, the s.183 recording-of-statements architecture, and the s.367–369 protective regime for accused with intellectual disability have each produced their own developing doctrine. This piece reads the year's jurisprudence as one practitioner architecture.
As the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita completes its first year in force, the early picture on bail, default bail and police-station procedure is taking shape. A practitioner's scan of where the new Code has settled and where it has not.
The Supreme Court's 2014 ruling that arrest in offences carrying up to seven years is not a clerical reflex — and the checklist its bench wrote into the working life of every station-house officer. A close digest, with the directions verbatim and a reading on how they travel onto BNSS s. 35.
On 29 May 2026, a Bench led by the Chief Justice issued the most prescriptive set of timeline directions ever placed on the High Courts in relation to pronouncing reserved judgments. A close reading of the directions, the escalation mechanism, and what they mean for the litigant on the other side of a reserved order.
The 1996 ruling that converted custodial protection from constitutional aspiration into station-house procedure — and the eleven directions that still govern every arrest in India, now carried over into Section 35 BNSS and beyond. A practitioner's digest.
Bhagwati J.'s 1979 directions ordered the release of thousands of undertrials who had been in custody longer than the sentence the offence carried — and, in doing so, read speedy trial into Article 21. A close digest of the reasoning, with a reading on how it now constrains pre-trial detention under the BNSS.
Section 482 of the BNSS replaced Section 438 of the CrPC on 1 July 2024, but did so without reproducing the statutory guiding factors — nature of accusation, antecedents, possibility of fleeing — that the CrPC had attached. A reading of the Chhattisgarh High Court's diagnosis of what this means for the anticipatory-bail discretion, and how trial courts and the bar should approach the post-BNSS framework.