Getting a certified copy of FIR and chargesheet

Two distinct rights, two distinct routes. The FIR copy is owed at the police station the moment the report is recorded; the chargesheet copy is owed by the Magistrate at the commencement of the trial. The 2016 Supreme Court direction in Youth Bar Association of India adds a third route — the police website itself.

Two documents anchor the early life of a criminal case in India — the First Information Report that opens it and the chargesheet that closes the investigation. The right to a copy of each is statutory, not discretionary, and the two rights vest in different persons: the FIR copy in the informant (and, after Youth Bar Association of India v. Union of India, (2016) 9 SCC 473, in the world at large through the police website), and the chargesheet copy in the accused at the trial stage. The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, has carried over the framework intact from the old Code; the section numbers have moved but the entitlements have not.

This guide sets out the statutory basis of each right, the two routes — the magistrate route and the police-website route — and what happens when the police or court office stalls.

Statutory right to the FIR copy

Section 173(2) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 [Section 154(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973] is the operative provision. The sub-section is short and emphatic: a copy of the information recorded under sub-section (1) "shall be given forthwith, free of cost, to the informant." Three things are doing work in that line. "Forthwith" denies the SHO any latitude on timing — the copy is owed at the police station, the same hour, not after the next shift, not after the daily diary is closed. "Free of cost" denies any fee. "To the informant" identifies the right-holder: it is the person who lodged the FIR, not yet the accused.

The duty is procedural, not discretionary. Standard practice at any station-house is to record the FIR, read it back to the informant, obtain the informant's signature, enter the substance in the General Diary, and hand over the carbon copy — all in one sitting. Where the informant is sent away with a promise that the copy "will come tomorrow," that is itself a breach of Section 173(2) BNSS, and the same kind of refusal that the Constitution Bench in Lalita Kumari v. Govt. of UP, (2014) 2 SCC 1, treated as actionable through the higher routes — Superintendent of Police, Magistrate under Section 175(3) BNSS [Section 156(3) CrPC], and writ jurisdiction.

A second statutory hook exists for the accused at the trial stage. Section 230 BNSS [Section 207 CrPC] requires the Magistrate, where the case has been instituted on a police report, to furnish the accused — free of cost — with copies of the FIR recorded under Section 173, the case-diary statements recorded under Section 180 [old Section 161] of every witness the prosecution proposes to examine, any confession or statement recorded under Section 183 [old Section 164], and the police report (chargesheet) itself. The accused, in other words, does not have to apply for the FIR copy at the police station at all once the matter has reached the Magistrate; the entitlement is delivered as part of the Section 230 supply.

Statutory right to the chargesheet copy

The chargesheet is what the police submit under Section 193 BNSS [Section 173 CrPC] when the investigation ends with the conclusion that there is enough material to send the accused to trial. The Code does not require the police to hand a copy directly to the accused at the station — the duty runs to the Magistrate. Section 230 BNSS [Section 207 CrPC] then casts a corresponding duty on the Magistrate to furnish the accused, "without delay" and "free of cost," with copies of the chargesheet and the supporting documents listed in Section 193(6) BNSS [Section 173(5) CrPC]. The Supreme Court in Noor Khan v. State of Rajasthan, AIR 1964 SC 286, characterised this as a "valuable right of the accused, failure to comply with which may render a conviction liable to be set aside where prejudice may be reasonably inferred."

The Magistrate also has a narrow discretion to allow inspection in lieu of copies where the documents are voluminous — the proviso to Section 230 BNSS preserves it — but the default obligation is the supply of copies. The chargesheet must be complete when it is filed; an incomplete chargesheet does not stop the clock under the Section 187 BNSS [Section 167 CrPC] custody scheme, but the delay in furnishing copies to the accused after filing does not, by itself, attract Section 187 (State of Karnataka v. Babu, (1994) CrLJ 651 (Kant)).

For a private complainant or victim who is not the accused, the chargesheet is harder to obtain. The accused gets it free; the complainant has to apply to the trial court for a certified copy under the rules of the High Court concerned, paying the prescribed copying fee. Most High Court rules allow it on a vakalatnama and payment of the per-page fee. Refusals at the copying counter, where they happen, are almost always defeated by an application before the Magistrate under Section 528 BNSS [Section 482 CrPC] or in the inspection-of-records provisions of the relevant Civil/Criminal Manual.

Procedure — the magistrate route

The classical route, used since the old Code, is an application before the Magistrate or the Sessions Court where the case is pending. The application is a one-page memorandum on the lawyer's letterhead, addressed to the court, identifying the case (FIR number, police station, year, the BNS sections involved, the case number assigned by the court), the document sought (FIR, chargesheet, Section 180 statements, seizure memo, post-mortem report, FSL report), the applicant's status (accused, complainant, victim, informant, third party with legitimate interest), and the prayer — "certified copy of the documents mentioned in the schedule".

The application is filed with the Reader of the court. Court fee is the State-prescribed slab — typically a few rupees per page for a certified copy, payable on the court-fee stamps affixed to the application. For an accused who has not yet been supplied with the Section 230 BNSS set, no court-fee is required at all — the copies are owed free of cost. For an informant seeking the FIR after the station-house copy has been lost or withheld, the application is to the court of the Magistrate having jurisdiction over the police station; the same court is the addressee where the case has not yet reached the chargesheet stage.

The processing time varies by State and by court. A working benchmark is fifteen to thirty days for ordinary copying; urgent copy applications, where the rules permit them, are processed in three to seven days on payment of an urgent fee. The certified copy is delivered with the court seal, the date of preparation, and the signature of the Copyist or Deputy Registrar.

Procedure — the e-FIR / state-portal route

The Supreme Court's direction in Youth Bar Association of India v. Union of India, (2016) 9 SCC 473, transformed FIR access from a station-house transaction into a digital entitlement. The Court directed that copies of FIRs registered in all police stations within the territory of India shall be uploaded on the police website within twenty-four hours of registration. Where the police station has no connectivity, the period was extended to seventy-two hours; in remote and difficult terrain (the Court listed Jammu & Kashmir, the North-East and certain hill districts), the upload window was further relaxed to such period as the State Government may fix, not exceeding seventy-two hours from receipt of the FIR at the District Police Headquarters.

The direction came with two carve-outs. FIRs relating to offences of a sensitive nature — sexual offences, offences under the POCSO Act, 2012, offences relating to insurgency, terrorism and incidents under the Official Secrets Act, 1923 — are not to be uploaded; the Court held that this category requires protection of the victim's identity and the integrity of the investigation. Whether a particular FIR falls into the sensitive bracket is an administrative decision taken by an officer not below the rank of a Deputy Superintendent of Police; the decision is reviewable.

In practice, every State police force now runs a Citizen Portal where FIRs are searchable by FIR number, police station, year, or the name of the accused. The downloaded PDF carries the police-station seal and the date of registration but is not, by itself, a "certified copy" within the meaning of Section 76 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 [Section 76 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872]. For evidentiary use — to be marked as an exhibit, to attach to a writ petition, to file an FIR-quashing application before the High Court under Section 528 BNSS [Section 482 CrPC] — a certified copy from the Magistrate's court is still required. The website download is the working copy; the magistrate copy is the evidentiary copy.

An open question remains around the implementation of the Youth Bar Association direction. The Court contemplated a uniform 24/72-hour standard, but State police portals continue to upload selectively, and FIRs in pending investigations sometimes vanish from public-facing search after a takedown request. The Court has not had a clean opportunity to police compliance in a follow-up petition, and the question of liability for non-upload remains unresolved at the apex level. High Courts have, in writ proceedings, ordered specific uploads on a case-by-case basis.

When the police can refuse and what that costs them

The short answer is: the police cannot refuse to supply a copy of the FIR to the informant under Section 173(2) BNSS. There is no statutory ground for refusal. The longer answer is that refusal is occasionally dressed up as one of three procedural objections, each of which is answered by a higher route.

The first dressed-up refusal is "the FIR has not yet been registered." If the SHO has reduced the information to writing and entered the substance in the General Diary, the FIR has been registered, whether or not the SHO chooses to call it one; Lalita Kumari (2014) shut down the discretion to defer registration of a cognizable case. The informant's remedy is the Superintendent of Police under Section 173(4) BNSS [Section 154(3) CrPC], then the Magistrate under Section 175(3) BNSS, then the High Court under Article 226.

The second dressed-up refusal is "the case is sensitive." This is the carve-out from Youth Bar Association, and it goes to the question of upload on the police website, not to the question of supply to the informant. The Section 173(2) BNSS right is independent and survives the sensitivity classification; the informant still gets a copy at the station, even though the FIR will not be put on the public-facing site.

The third dressed-up refusal is "the investigation is at a delicate stage and disclosure will prejudice it." This argument may legitimately be used to resist a third party's application for a copy of the case diary under Section 192 BNSS [Section 172 CrPC] — case diaries are confidential. It does not lie against the informant for the FIR, or against the accused for the Section 230 BNSS set once the chargesheet has been filed.

Where the refusal is persistent, the standard escalation is an application under Section 528 BNSS [Section 482 CrPC] before the High Court for a direction. Costs orders against erring officers, though rare, have followed in writ proceedings; departmental consequences, contemplated by the police manuals, are more common.