Shaurya Singh v. CBI (2026): missing chargesheet copies do not give default bail under the BNSS

The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, carried over the default-bail scheme of the old Code of Criminal Procedure almost verbatim, but it also added a provision the CrPC never had. In Shaurya Sunil Kumar Singh v. Central Bureau of Investigation, decided on 1 July 2026, a Bench of Justices Sanjay Karol (who authored the opinion) and Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh confronted the question that new provision throws up: if an investigating officer files the chargesheet in time but fails to file the extra copies meant to be handed to the accused, does the accused become entitled to statutory bail? This is among the first authoritative Supreme Court readings of default bail under the BNSS, and the Court answered firmly in the negative.

The facts

The case arose from a CBI investigation in Mumbai into a cyber-fraud network. According to the FIR (No. RC0682025E00041, dated 4 July 2025), unknown cyber criminals were using sophisticated digital means — impersonation, forged documents and the tactics popularly known as "digital arrest", customs fraud and phishing — to extort money from individuals, assisted by bank officials who opened and operated "mule accounts" on forged KYC. One such mule company, SP Cargo and Courier Services Pvt. Ltd., operated by Sudhir Palande, received Rs 3.81 crore of fraud proceeds on 2 July 2025, which were then dispersed to other mule accounts.

The appellant, Shaurya Sunil Kumar Singh, was alleged to have provided logistical support to the main accused — transporting the cheque books, ATM cards and SIM cards used for the offences, facilitating payments, and holding the mobile phones used for the transfers of 2 July 2025. He was taken into custody on 13 July 2025 and, after remand, sent to judicial custody on 20 July 2025.

The dates that mattered for the appeal are undisputed. The prosecution filed its chargesheet against the appellant and co-accused on 2 September 2025; a copy was supplied to the appellant on 23 September 2025. In between, on 17 September 2025, the appellant applied for default bail under Section 187(3) BNSS, contending that because the copies of the chargesheet and accompanying documents had not been filed and supplied to him within the statutory period, he had become eligible for default bail on 11 September 2025. The Special Judge, CBI, dismissed that application on 25 September 2025, and the Bombay High Court dismissed the ensuing revision on 6 February 2026, holding that default bail arises only when the chargesheet is not filed in time, and that failure to furnish a copy is not a ground for it. Cognizance of the offences had by then been taken on 18 October 2025.

The question

The appellant's argument turned on a single textual point. Section 193(8) BNSS requires the investigating officer to "also submit such number of copies of the police report along with other documents duly indexed to the Magistrate for supply to the accused as required under section 230". Section 230 in turn obliges the Magistrate to furnish those copies to the accused within fourteen days of production or appearance. The appellant contended that this copy-filing requirement is mandatory, and that its breach should carry the same consequence as non-filing of the chargesheet itself — the accrual of the indefeasible right to default bail. The CBI countered that the statutory bail right exists only where the police fail to file the chargesheet within sixty or ninety days, and that here the copy had in fact been supplied within time.

The precise issue the Court framed was whether the filing of a chargesheet without the additional copies required by Section 193(8) BNSS would entitle the appellant to default bail.

What the Court held

The Court's starting point was structural. On a conjoint reading of the provisions, it found that Section 167(2) CrPC and Section 187(3) BNSS — the default-bail provisions — are substantially identical, differing only in phraseology. The chargesheet provisions, Section 173 CrPC and Section 193 BNSS, are also substantially the same in form. The one genuine addition is Section 193(8), the requirement to file additional copies for supply to the accused, coupled with the fourteen-day supply timeline in Section 230. Critically, Section 193(8) has no direct predecessor in the CrPC.

Reviewing the settled principles — that default bail is an indefeasible right flowing from Article 21, but a conditional one that comes to an end once the chargesheet is filed within the prescribed time — the Court held that non-filing of the additional copies does not vitiate the chargesheet itself.

To reach that conclusion the Court extended the CrPC-era line of authority to the new statute. It relied on Judgebir Singh v. NIA, where it had been held that once the investigation is complete with the filing of a report containing the required particulars, the question of default bail does not arise; and on CBI v. Kapil Wadhawan, which held that even where not all documents relied upon by the prosecution accompany the chargesheet, that omission does not invalidate or vitiate the chargesheet or entitle the accused to default bail. It drew equally on CBI v. R.S. Pai and Narendra Kumar Amin v. CBI, decisions that treated the analogous requirement to supply supporting documents and witness statements under Section 173(5) CrPC as directory rather than mandatory — a "shall" that does not carry the consequence of statutory bail.

Applied to the BNSS, the reasoning yields a clean rule: the right to default bail arises when the chargesheet is not filed within sixty or ninety days; once it is filed in compliance with the form prescribed under Section 193(3), the right ceases.

On the record, the chargesheet had been filed within the statutory period on 2 September 2025, in compliance with Section 193(3), and cognizance had been taken on it — an order left unchallenged. The right to default bail therefore stood extinguished on 2 September 2025, and the appellant ought to have applied for regular bail. The appeal was dismissed and the High Court's order affirmed.

Why it matters

The decision fills genuine whitespace. Because Section 193(8) is a BNSS innovation, there was no CrPC precedent squarely on the point, and an accused could plausibly have argued that the legislature, by creating a distinct copy-filing obligation with its own fourteen-day timeline, meant to make that obligation a condition of continued custody. The Court closed that gap by locating the default-bail trigger firmly in the completeness of the investigation — evidenced by a Section 193(3)-compliant report filed in time — rather than in the ministerial act of supplying copies. Copy-and-supply defaults are to be policed through Section 230's own timeline and directions, not converted into a liberty entitlement.

Two caveats are worth stressing. The ruling is confined to eligibility for default bail; it says nothing about the appellant's guilt, which remains to be tried. And the Court expressly kept the appellant's regular-bail application alive, directing that it be considered on its own merits, independent of this appeal, since default bail is not a decision on merits. The judgment should not be read as any finding of culpability in the underlying cyber-fraud.

Related on Valkya

• Satender Kumar Antil v. CBI: bail guidelines
• Prabir Purkayastha v. State (NCT of Delhi): grounds of arrest
• BNSS bail, one year on
• The BNSS one year on: a practitioner's read

Sources

• Supreme Court of India, Shaurya Sunil Kumar Singh v. Central Bureau of Investigation, 2026 INSC 666 (Judgment dated 1 July 2026)
• Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, Sections 187, 193 and 230