On 12 May 2023, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court set aside a Telangana High Court order granting bail in a Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 matter and remitted the bail applications for fresh consideration. The Court held that the investigation of the predicate (scheduled) offence and the Enforcement Directorate's investigation of the money-laundering offence are separate and distinct, and that the mere filing of a charge-sheet in the predicate offence is no ground to grant bail under the PMLA while the ED investigation is still ongoing — a rare Enforcement-Directorate-favourable, bail-cancellation ratio in the post-Vijay Madanlal line. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal frame, and where it sits against the pro-liberty cases.
On 27 August 2024 the Supreme Court granted bail to K. Kavitha in the Delhi excise-policy money-laundering case, holding that the first proviso to Section 45(1) PMLA — which relaxes the twin bail conditions for a woman — cannot be denied merely because the woman is highly educated, sophisticated, or a Member of Parliament or Legislative Assembly. The Court found the Delhi High Court had misread Saumya Chaurasia to confine the proviso to 'vulnerable women'. A digest of the pro-applicant pole of the s.45 proviso debate, the excise-policy context, and how it pairs against the restrictive discretionary reading.
On 28 March 2023, a two-judge bench held that undue and unexplained delay in trial, read with Section 436A CrPC and the presumption of innocence, can justify bail under the NDPS Act despite the Section 37 twin conditions.
On 19 July 2022, a three-judge bench held that 'reasonable grounds' under Section 37(1)(b) NDPS mean credible and plausible grounds, and that custody length or a filed chargesheet do not by themselves relax the bar. The Court cancelled bail.
On 23 November 2017, a two-judge bench of Justices R.F. Nariman and Sanjay Kishan Kaul struck down the twin conditions for bail in Section 45(1) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, as unconstitutional — violative of Articles 14 and 21. The Court held that tethering the bail fetter to the punishment threshold of the Part-A scheduled offence, rather than to the money-laundering offence itself, was a classification with no rational nexus to the object of the Act. This is the doctrinal origin of the whole twin-conditions saga; a 2018 amendment recast the provision, and Vijay Madanlal Choudhary (2022) later upheld the revived form. A digest of the holding, the ratio on Articles 14 and 21, and why the strike-down remains the reference point everything since is measured against.
On 14 December 2023 the Supreme Court refused PMLA bail to Saumya Chaurasia, holding that the words 'may be' in the first proviso to Section 45(1) make the relaxed-bail benefit for a woman discretionary — to be extended only after weighing the extent of her involvement and the nature of the evidence — and cautioning counsel against inaccurate representations in special leave petitions.
The Supreme Court set aside a High Court bail order in an NDPS commercial-quantity case, holding the Section 37 twin conditions mandatory and 'reasonable grounds' to mean substantial probable cause, not merely a prima facie view.
On 13 February 2025 the Supreme Court set aside a Patna High Court order granting PMLA bail by a cryptic order, holding that the Section 45 twin conditions are mandatory, that a bail court must record its satisfaction on them in a reasoned order, and that Section 50 statements are not barred by Article 20(3) at the bail stage. A digest of the holding and where it sits in the PMLA bail line.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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 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.
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.