Parvinder Singh v. ED
Supreme Court of India2026 INSC 519Bench: Justice M.M. Sundresh and Justice N. Kotiswar Singh
The Supreme Court held that the right to be heard before cognizance is taken on a complaint, as conferred by the first proviso to Section 223(1) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, is a substantive right of the accused, forming an integral part of the fair-trial guarantee under Article 21 of the Constitution; and that this right must be extended to an accused even where the underlying prosecution complaint — including a complaint under the Prevention of Money-Laundering Act, 2002 — was filed before BNSS came into force on 1 July 2024, so long as the act of taking cognizance itself takes place after that date. The Bench reasoned that the saving clause in Section 531(2)(a) BNSS protects only those proceedings, appeals, inquiries and trials which had been initiated or were 'pending' under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 at the time of the commencement of BNSS, and that the term 'inquiry' as defined in Section 2(1)(k) BNSS does not encompass purely ministerial or housekeeping acts such as numbering a complaint, scrutiny by the Registry, or routine listing for cognizance. Until the court applies its judicial mind under Section 223 BNSS, no 'inquiry' has commenced. Accordingly, where cognizance is taken after 1 July 2024 without affording the accused the opportunity of hearing mandated by the proviso, such an order of cognizance is void ab initio and liable to be set aside. The Court emphasised the constitutional weight of the proviso: it represents a deliberate legislative shift from the position under the 1973 Code, designed to filter out frivolous or malicious complaints at the threshold, and is therefore a substantive right that cannot be denied on the basis of formal categorisation of the complaint's filing date.