Legal Remedies if You've Been Falsely Accused of a Crime

If you have been falsely accused of a crime in India, you have four working remedies and they are best used in this order: pre-arrest protection (anticipatory bail under Section 482 BNSS, the old Section 438 CrPC), an attack on the case itself (quashing under Section 528 BNSS, the old Section 482 CrPC), discharge before charges are framed (Sections 250 and 262 BNSS), and only after that, action against the person who filed the false case. The costly mistake is doing none of these and simply waiting to be believed.

Part of the criminal defence practice at S Jain & Attorneys, Bangalore.

Since 1 July 2024 the criminal codes have changed names and numbers. The Indian Penal Code is now the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 (BNS), the Code of Criminal Procedure is now the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023 (BNSS), and the Indian Evidence Act is now the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023 (BSA). The remedies are the ones you may have read about under the old numbering, renumbered and in a few places tightened. Both numbers are given below so that you can follow an older order or an older article without confusion.

Arrest is not automatic, and that is the first thing to understand

Most people assume that an FIR means an arrest. It does not. Under Section 35(1)(b) BNSS (formerly Section 41 CrPC), for a cognizable offence punishable with imprisonment up to seven years, a police officer may arrest without warrant only if the officer both has reason to believe the person committed the offence and is satisfied that arrest is necessary for one of five specified purposes: to prevent a further offence, for proper investigation, to stop evidence being destroyed or tampered with, to stop the accused inducing or threatening a witness, or because the person's presence in court cannot otherwise be ensured. The officer must record those reasons in writing. The proviso goes further: where arrest is not required, the officer must record in writing the reasons for not arresting.

Section 35(3) BNSS then requires the officer, in all such cases, to issue a notice directing the person to appear. Under Section 35(5), a person who complies with that notice and continues to comply cannot be arrested for that offence unless the officer records reasons for arresting anyway. This is the statutory home of the directions in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, (2014) 8 SCC 273, where the Supreme Court held that arrest must not be automatic in offences punishable up to seven years and that police must justify necessity. Two decades earlier, Joginder Kumar v. State of U.P., (1994) 4 SCC 260, had already held that arrest cannot be routine and that an arrested person is entitled to have a relative or friend informed, with reasons recorded, as a consequence of Articles 21 and 22(1).

There is one more protection worth knowing. Section 35(7) BNSS says no arrest shall be made without the prior permission of an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police where the offence is punishable with imprisonment of less than three years and the person is infirm or above sixty years of age.

Key takeaway. A notice under Section 35(3) BNSS is not a summons to be ignored and it is not an arrest. It is the single best document you can have in a false case, because compliance with it converts arrest from a police decision into a decision the officer must justify in writing. Attend, sign the acknowledgement, keep a copy, and say nothing beyond your identity without your advocate present.

The arrest rules most people do not know they can hold the police to.

The first seventy-two hours: a working sequence

1. Establish what actually exists. Is there an FIR, a notice under Section 35(3) BNSS, or only a threat that a complaint will be filed? Under Section 173(2) BNSS a copy of the information recorded as an FIR must be given free of cost to the informant or victim; as the accused, your advocate obtains it from the court record or the police station, and increasingly from the state police portal.
2. Say nothing on record without counsel. You are not obliged to incriminate yourself. Explanations given in a police station rarely help and routinely become the prosecution's own narrative of your version.
3. Freeze the evidence before it disappears. Call detail records, CCTV footage, hotel and toll records, office access logs and chat backups all get overwritten on short retention cycles. Send preservation requests in writing, dated, by email, the same week.
4. Take a written chronology from the client's side. Dates, places, who was present, what documents exist for each point. This is what an anticipatory bail petition and a quashing petition are both built on.
5. Assess pre-arrest protection immediately. If the offence is non-bailable and the apprehension of arrest is real, file under Section 482 BNSS before the Court of Session or the High Court rather than waiting for the knock.
6. Decide the second front. Quashing, discharge, or simply defending the trial. That decision depends on whether the complaint, taken at its highest, even discloses an offence.
7. Only then consider counter-action. A counter-complaint filed in week one usually reads as retaliation. The same complaint filed after a discharge or a quashing order reads as vindication.

The remedies compared

Anticipatory bail under Section 482 BNSS

Section 482(1) BNSS allows a person who has reason to believe he may be arrested on an accusation of a non-bailable offence to apply to the High Court or the Court of Session for a direction that, in the event of arrest, he shall be released on bail. Section 482(2) lists the conditions a court may attach: making yourself available for interrogation when required, not inducing or threatening any person acquainted with the facts, not leaving India without permission, and any other condition available under Section 480(3).

Two practical points matter more than the section text. First, Section 482(4) BNSS excludes anticipatory bail altogether for accusations under Section 65 and Section 70(2) BNS, which cover the gravest sexual offences. Second, an anticipatory bail order is not a shield against investigation. You will still be required to join the investigation, and a refusal to co-operate is the most common reason such protection is later withdrawn. For a deeper treatment of what courts may and may not impose, see our guide on anticipatory bail conditions.

Quashing a false FIR under Section 528 BNSS

Section 528 BNSS preserves the inherent powers of the High Court, which include the power to quash an FIR or a criminal proceeding to prevent abuse of the process of a court. The controlling authority remains State of Haryana v. Bhajan Lal, 1992 Supp (1) SCC 335, where the Supreme Court set out seven categories in which that power may be exercised. In false-case work, four of them do most of the heavy lifting:

• The allegations in the FIR, even if taken at face value and accepted in their entirety, do not make out any offence.
• The allegations do not disclose a cognizable offence justifying investigation by police without a Magistrate's order.
• The allegations are so absurd and inherently improbable that no prudent person could ever reach a just conclusion that there is sufficient ground to proceed.
• The proceeding is manifestly attended with mala fides, or is maliciously instituted with an ulterior motive for wreaking vengeance and spite on the accused.

That last category is the one most often invoked in property fights, employment disputes, business fallouts and matrimonial breakdowns. It is also the hardest to prove, because motive alone is not enough. A High Court will not weigh evidence at the quashing stage or decide who is telling the truth. It reads the complaint and the material collected and asks whether an offence is disclosed at all. This is why a quashing petition succeeds or fails on documents, not on indignation. Matters of this kind are argued in High Court litigation, and the quality of the annexures usually decides the outcome.

Common mistake. Filing a quashing petition that argues the complainant is lying. That is a trial question and the High Court will decline to enter it. The petition that works argues something narrower and colder: that even if every word of the complaint were true, the ingredients of the offence charged are still not made out, or the dispute is purely civil and has been dressed up as a crime.

Discharge, the quiet remedy most people miss

Between an FIR and a verdict there is a stage where a court decides whether there is enough to put you on trial at all. The BNSS has, for the first time, put a clock on it.

Under Section 250(1) BNSS, in a Sessions case, the accused may apply for discharge within sixty days from the date of commitment of the case under Section 232. Under Section 250(2), if the judge considers that there is not sufficient ground for proceeding, the accused must be discharged with reasons recorded. In a warrant case instituted on a police report, Section 262(1) BNSS gives a parallel right: an application for discharge within sixty days from the date of supply of copies of documents under Section 230, and the Magistrate must discharge if the charge is found groundless.

Deadline warning. The sixty-day discharge windows under Sections 250 and 262 BNSS run from commitment and from supply of copies, not from the date you engage a lawyer. Diarise both dates the day they occur. Missing the window does not end the defence, but it removes the cheapest and quickest exit from the case and leaves you facing a full trial.

What you can do about the person who filed the false case

Indian law does provide teeth here. It is just that the teeth work later than most clients want.

• Section 248 BNS (formerly Section 211 IPC) punishes a person who, with intent to cause injury, institutes or causes to be instituted any criminal proceeding, or falsely charges another with an offence, knowing there is no just or lawful ground. The punishment is up to five years or a fine up to two lakh rupees or both; where the false charge is of an offence punishable with death, life imprisonment or ten years or more, it rises to ten years and fine.
• Section 217 BNS (formerly Section 182 IPC) punishes giving a public servant information known to be false, intending or knowing it likely that the public servant will use his lawful power to another person's injury or annoyance. Punishment is up to one year, or fine up to ten thousand rupees, or both.
• Section 229 BNS (formerly Section 193 IPC) punishes intentionally giving or fabricating false evidence in a judicial proceeding, with imprisonment up to seven years and fine. Where the false evidence was given in court, the route is a complaint by that court under Section 379 BNSS (formerly Section 340 CrPC), not a private complaint.
• Section 273 BNSS (formerly Section 250 CrPC) lets the Magistrate who discharges or acquits you, in a case instituted on a complaint or on information, call on the complainant to show cause why compensation should not be paid, and order it where there was no reasonable ground for the accusation. Default carries simple imprisonment up to thirty days, and the section expressly preserves your separate civil and criminal remedies.
• Section 399 BNSS (formerly Section 358 CrPC) allows compensation where a person caused a police officer to arrest another without sufficient ground, but the ceiling is one thousand rupees per arrested person. It is a statement of principle rather than a real remedy.
• Civil suits for malicious prosecution and for defamation remain available, and damages there are not capped. They are slow, and they require proof that the prosecution terminated in your favour, that it was instituted without reasonable and probable cause, and that it was malicious.

One provision now helps in both directions. The first proviso to Section 223(1) BNSS says that no cognizance of an offence shall be taken by a Magistrate on a complaint without giving the accused an opportunity of being heard. That is new, it did not exist under the CrPC, and it means a private complaint can no longer be converted into process against you behind your back.

Building the defence file from day one

False cases are won on documents that existed before the dispute did. Bank statements, ticketing records, geotagged photographs, biometric attendance logs and message threads are all more persuasive than a witness who is obviously on your side.

Electronic material now needs one extra step. Under Section 63 BSA (which replaces Section 65B of the Evidence Act), a computer output is admissible without producing the original device only if the statutory conditions are met, and Section 63(4) requires a certificate in the prescribed form to be submitted along with the electronic record at each instance of submission, with a hash report. Screenshots pasted into a document, with no certificate and no source device, are the single most common way good evidence is thrown out. Where a document or device is with a third party, Section 94 BNSS allows the court to summon its production.

Two timing rules are also useful to know. Under Section 193(3)(ii) BNSS the investigating officer must inform the informant or victim of the progress of the investigation within ninety days, which in practice tells you whether the case is moving. And under Section 187(3) BNSS, if the investigation is not completed and no final report is filed within sixty days (ninety days for offences punishable with death, life imprisonment, or ten years or more), an accused in custody is entitled to be released on default bail if he applies and furnishes bail before the report arrives.

What I tell clients

The advice I give in the first meeting is almost always the same, and it is rarely what the client wants to hear. Do not go to the police station to explain yourself, because the explanation becomes a document you cannot take back. Do not send long messages to the complainant asking why they are doing this, because those messages become annexures. Do not file a counter-complaint in the first week, because it converts a false case into a cross-case and gives the police a reason to treat both sides as equally suspect. And accept that the first six months are about protection and paperwork rather than vindication. Where these matters go wrong, it is almost never because the law was against the client. It is because evidence was allowed to expire, a deadline for discharge went past unnoticed, or the client talked. Our criminal defence practice in Bengaluru sees the same three failures in file after file.

Frequently Asked Questions

A false accusation is frightening, but the law gives you real remedies, and acting early and with proper guidance makes the biggest difference.

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult a qualified advocate about your specific matter.

Related guides and where to get help

If this is a live problem rather than background reading, our criminal defence practice handles these matters from Bengaluru, including for clients who cannot attend court in person. These guides go deeper on the neighbouring questions:

• GST Arrest Rights: What an Accused Can Demand
• POCSO, Consent and Bail: Why a Minor's "Consent" Has No Legal Value in India
• Shareholder Disputes in Private Limited Companies: Legal Remedies & Prevention