Charge — Section 211 to 224

Your phone is snatched near Belapur station and the police catch someone. Before he can be tried, somebody has to write down, in one precise paragraph, what exactly he is supposed to have done, when, and where. Without that paragraph he cannot prepare a defence, and the court cannot decide what it is deciding. That paragraph is the charge. The syllabus calls this CrPC sections 211 to 224; today the same rules sit in sections 234 to 247 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023, and the question for this topic is what a good charge must contain and how far the court may change it.

In two minutes

A charge is the written statement of the offence and its particulars that tells the accused exactly what he must meet at trial; the BNSS (ss.234–247) says what it must contain, when errors matter, when the court may alter it, and which offences and persons can be tried together.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Criminal Procedure Code 1973, Juvenile Justice Act 2015 and POCSO Act 2012 on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.