TL;DR: Section 173 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS) is the successor to section 154 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC) and governs how the police record information about a cognizable offence. It keeps the core obligation to register an FIR, adds electronic reporting, a free-copy entitlement, and a statutory preliminary inquiry for offences punishable between three and seven years, to be completed within fourteen days with the prior approval of an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police.

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What section 173 actually contains

Section 173 BNSS, set out in full on India Code, the government’s official statute repository, sits in Chapter XIII of the code, titled “Information to the Police and their Powers to Investigate.” It is the first provision an investigation touches, because it decides whether an FIR gets registered at all. The section runs to four sub-sections: sub-section (1) covers how information about a cognizable offence is given and recorded, including a proviso for specified categories of offence and for informants with disabilities; sub-section (2) is the free-copy entitlement; sub-section (3) is the preliminary inquiry; and sub-section (4) is the remedy available to a person whose information a police officer refuses to record.

Every one of these four sub-sections has a direct predecessor in section 154 CrPC, but not every sub-section is a straight renumbering. Sub-section (3), the preliminary inquiry, has no equivalent in the text of section 154 CrPC at all. It is new law, drawn from judicial interpretation rather than from the old statute, and that is the part of section 173 worth reading most carefully.

This piece reads section 173 sub-section by sub-section, sets it against section 154 CrPC, and against the Supreme Court’s ruling in Lalita Kumari v Government of UP, the Constitution Bench judgment that governed FIR registration before section 173 existed. It does not cover the mechanics of a zero FIR or an e-FIR as a standalone topic, and it does not walk through the full ladder of remedies available when a police station refuses to register a complaint. Both of those get dedicated treatment elsewhere on this blog.

The core obligation: cognizable offence, no discretion

Section 173(1) BNSS opens with the same trigger as its predecessor: information relating to the commission of a cognizable offence. That phrase carries all the weight in the provision. A cognizable offence is one in which a police officer may arrest without a warrant and investigate without a magistrate’s order, as opposed to a non-cognizable offence, where the officer needs judicial permission before investigating. Whether an offence is cognizable or non-cognizable is fixed by the First Schedule to the BNSS, read against the offence defined in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS) or in a special statute. PRS Legislative Research’s analysis of the BNSS Bill sets out how the classification scheme carried over from the CrPC’s First Schedule. The classification question is covered in more depth in this blog’s piece on cognizable versus non-cognizable offences, and it is worth reading before relying on section 173 for a specific fact pattern, because the entire registration duty under section 173 turns on that threshold classification.

Once information discloses a cognizable offence, the officer in charge of a police station has no discretion to decline registration, evaluate credibility, or wait for corroboration before making an entry. The statute does not use the word “discretion,” and it does not need to: the operative verb is that the substance of the information “shall be reduced to writing.” That obligation is the reason section 173, like section 154 before it, is treated as one of the most litigated provisions in Indian criminal procedure. A refusal to register triggers everything from departmental complaints to writ petitions, and the volume of case law interpreting this single duty, discussed later in this piece, is larger than for almost any other provision in the code.

An informant does not need to name every accused, specify every date, or supply proof at the reporting stage. The threshold is whether the information, taken at face value, discloses a cognizable offence. Once it does, the recording duty is triggered; what happens after that, in the small band of offences eligible for a preliminary inquiry, is the subject of sub-section (3) below.

Sub-section (1): how information is recorded

Section 173(1) covers two channels for giving information: orally, and electronically. Where information is given orally to a police officer, it must be reduced to writing by the officer or under the officer’s direction, then read over to the informant, and signed by the person giving it. That sequence, write it down, read it back, get a signature, is unchanged in substance from the procedure under section 154 CrPC. What is new is the explicit statutory footing for electronic communication: information about a cognizable offence may be given by electronic means to the officer in charge of a police station. Where information reaches the police electronically, the informant is required to sign the recorded statement in person within three days of the electronic communication, for it to be treated as taken on record.

CrPC section 154 said nothing about electronic reporting. The BNSS puts it in the text of the provision itself, alongside the older oral-information mechanic, rather than leaving it to departmental circulars and state police manuals, which is roughly how electronic FIR registration operated in several states before 1 July 2024. The three-day signature requirement is the safeguard built into that expansion: an electronic complaint without a follow-up signature within the window does not crystallise into a formal record under the section.

Section 173(1) also carries an entry-in-a-register requirement once information is recorded, whether given orally or electronically, so that the record exists independently of the case diary that follows. That entry is what a complainant, or their advocate, can later point to when checking whether a report was in fact received and logged, distinct from whether it was acted upon. The National Judicial Data Grid and the eCourts services portal let a complainant track what happens to a case once it moves past this registration stage.

Recording by a woman officer, and information from a person with a disability

Section 173(1) carries a proviso for a defined set of offences under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023: sections 64 through 71, and sections 74 through 79, together with section 124. Those sections cluster around sexual offences and offences against the human body targeting women, including rape and related provisions, and acid-attack offences under section 124 BNS. Where information relates to an offence in that list and is given by a woman, the proviso requires that it be recorded by a woman police officer or any woman officer.

A second proviso in the same sub-section addresses a person who is temporarily or permanently mentally or physically disabled. Where such a person gives information about a cognizable offence, the police officer is required to record it at the residence of the person giving the information, or at a convenient place of the person’s choice, in the presence of an interpreter or a special educator, as the case requires. The recording must be videographed, and the officer is required to get the statement recorded by a magistrate as soon as possible.

Neither requirement existed in the text of section 154 CrPC. Both are genuine additions, not renumberings, and both track a broader pattern across the BNSS of building victim-protection procedure directly into first-contact provisions rather than leaving it to guidelines issued after the fact.

Sub-section (2): the free copy to the informant

Section 173(2) is a short, direct entitlement: a copy of the information as recorded under sub-section (1) must be given, free of cost, to the informant or the victim, and the statute uses the word “forthwith.” There is no numbered day-count attached to that word, unlike the fourteen-day figure in sub-section (3). The duty is immediate rather than time-boxed, which means an officer cannot lawfully register an FIR and then delay handing over the copy pending some later administrative step.

CrPC section 154(2) contained the same free-copy obligation in substance, so this is one of the sub-sections of section 173 that is closest to a straight carry-over from the old provision rather than a genuine change. Where it matters in practice is proof: an informant holding a signed, stamped copy of the FIR, obtained at the police station on the day of registration, has documentary evidence of exactly when and what was recorded, which becomes relevant the moment a dispute arises later about whether the FIR was registered promptly or was backdated.

Sub-section (3): the preliminary inquiry

Section 173(3) BNSS is the sub-section with no direct predecessor in the CrPC text. It applies to a cognizable offence that is punishable with imprisonment for three years or more but less than seven years. For an offence in that band, the officer in charge of a police station may, with the prior permission of an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police, conduct a preliminary inquiry to ascertain whether there exists a prima facie case for proceeding, instead of registering an FIR on receipt of the information. That preliminary inquiry is required to be completed within fourteen days.

Three things about this sub-section deserve separate attention, because they are frequently blurred together in casual summaries.

First, the punishment band. The preliminary inquiry option is defined by sentence length, three years or more but less than seven, not by offence category. That is a purely quantitative gate, applying to any offence that falls in that punishment range, regardless of subject matter, and the punishment prescribed for each offence is fixed in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 text on India Code, which a lawyer needs open alongside section 173(3) to confirm whether a given offence actually falls in the band.

Second, the approval requirement. The decision to conduct a preliminary inquiry rather than register immediately is not left to the station house officer alone. It requires the prior permission of an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police, which is meant to prevent the preliminary-inquiry route becoming a default delay mechanism used by every investigating officer at will.

Third, the fourteen-day window. The statute fixes an outer limit for how long the preliminary inquiry can run, but it does not, in its own text, state a consequence for exceeding that limit. It does not say the FIR is automatically registered if the fourteen days lapse, and it does not say the informant’s complaint is deemed abandoned. That silence is a genuine gap in the provision, and it means the fourteen-day figure functions, in current practice, more as an outer limit on the inquiry itself than as an automatic trigger for anything else. This blog’s BNSS statutory timelines checklist tracks this and other fixed windows across the code, including how the fourteen-day figure is treated where it is exceeded.

Sub-section (4): what happens if the officer refuses

Section 173(4) gives a person aggrieved by a police officer’s refusal to record information under sub-section (1) two routes. The aggrieved person may send the substance of the information, in writing and by post, to the Superintendent of Police concerned. If the Superintendent is satisfied that the information discloses a cognizable offence, the Superintendent must either investigate the case personally or direct an investigation by a subordinate officer, who then has all the powers of an officer in charge of the station in relation to that offence. Alternatively, the aggrieved person may approach the magistrate under the BNSS provision empowering a magistrate to order investigation into a cognizable offence.

This sub-section is a narrow gateway, not the full picture of what happens when a police station will not register a complaint. It sits at the start of a longer remedy ladder that runs through departmental escalation, magistrate-directed investigation, and, where those fail, a writ of mandamus to the jurisdictional High Court, one of the five constitutional writs covered in full elsewhere on this blog, filed following the procedure set out in this blog’s guide to filing a writ petition. That ladder, including how courts have treated delay at each rung, gets its own dedicated treatment on this blog; this piece stops at what section 173(4) itself provides.

CrPC section 154 vs BNSS section 173

FeatureCrPC section 154BNSS section 173
Mandatory registration for a cognizable offence✓✓
Electronic information accepted, with signature requirement✗✓ (signature within three days)
Free copy to informant, forthwith✓✓
Statutory preliminary inquiry with a stated time limit✗✓ (fourteen days, offences punishable three to seven years)
Recording by a woman officer for specified offences✗ (developed through guidelines and case law, not the section text)✓ (proviso to sub-section (1))
Procedure for informants with disabilities, including videography✗✓ (proviso to sub-section (1))
Remedy on refusal, complaint to Superintendent of Police✓✓

The registration duty itself, and the free-copy entitlement, carry over largely unchanged. What is new is procedural detail built into the text: electronic reporting, disability accommodation, gender-specific recording for a defined set of offences, and, most significantly, a codified preliminary inquiry with its own time limit. Section 154 CrPC never mentioned a preliminary inquiry at all. The concept existed only because the Supreme Court read it into the CrPC’s mandatory-registration rule, in the judgment discussed next.

Lalita Kumari v Government of UP: the mandatory-registration rule

Lalita Kumari v Government of Uttar Pradesh, (2014) 2 SCC 1, reported in full on Indian Kanoon, is a Constitution Bench judgment of the Supreme Court of India, decided on 12 November 2013 by a five-judge bench of P. Sathasivam CJI, B.S. Chauhan J, Ranjana Prakash Desai J, Ranjan Gogoi J, and S.A. Bobde J. The reference arose because different benches of the Supreme Court had taken inconsistent positions on a single question: is registration of an FIR mandatory under section 154 CrPC once information disclosing a cognizable offence is received, or does the police officer have discretion to conduct a preliminary inquiry first?

The Constitution Bench held that registration is mandatory. If information disclosing a cognizable offence is laid before an officer in charge of a police station, satisfying the requirements of section 154(1) CrPC, the officer has no option except to enter the substance of it in the prescribed form. The court rejected the argument that the police could satisfy themselves of the truth of an allegation, through an unstructured preliminary check, before deciding whether to register a case at all.

Having laid down mandatory registration as the rule, the bench then carved out a narrow exception. Preliminary inquiry, the court held, is permissible only where the information received does not, on its face, disclose a cognizable offence but indicates the necessity of an inquiry to decide that threshold question. The judgment listed specific categories of case in which such a limited inquiry may be conducted: matrimonial or family disputes, commercial offences, medical negligence cases, corruption cases, and cases involving abnormal delay or laches in initiating criminal prosecution, giving the example of a delay of over three months in reporting the matter without a satisfactory explanation. The court fixed the outer limit for that preliminary inquiry at seven days, with the reasons for delay reflected in the general diary entry.

The judgment is not a case that illustrates a point about FIR registration; it is the source of the modern doctrine itself, and it remained the governing law on this question for the entire life of section 154 CrPC after November 2013. The Supreme Court of India’s own judgment portal carries the reportable judgments of the court for verification against any secondary summary.

Does the statutory preliminary inquiry go further than Lalita Kumari allowed?

This is the genuinely unsettled question at the centre of section 173(3), and it deserves to be stated plainly rather than smoothed over.

Lalita Kumari built preliminary inquiry around subject matter. The five categories the Constitution Bench listed, matrimonial disputes, commercial offences, medical negligence, corruption, and cases with abnormal delay, share a common feature: each is a class of case where a bare complaint is genuinely likely to be ambiguous about whether a cognizable offence is disclosed at all, as opposed to a civil dispute dressed up as a criminal one. The court’s rationale for permitting inquiry in those categories, and nowhere else, was that the ambiguity sits at the threshold: does this information disclose a cognizable offence in the first place.

Section 173(3) BNSS builds preliminary inquiry around sentence length instead. It applies to any cognizable offence punishable with three to seven years’ imprisonment, without regard to subject matter, and without requiring that the information be ambiguous about whether an offence is disclosed at all. Read literally, an assault case, a theft case, or any other offence carrying a three-to-seven-year sentence falls within the scope of section 173(3), whether or not it resembles any of the five categories the Constitution Bench identified.

That is a real structural difference, not a drafting quirk. A punishment-band test sweeps in a materially larger set of cases than a five-category, subject-matter test. It is also, on the fourteen-day window, twice the length of time the Constitution Bench set as the outer limit for inquiry in 2013.

Whether that makes section 173(3) unconstitutional, or simply a legislative recalibration that the Constitution Bench’s exception did not anticipate, is not a question this piece resolves, and no reported judgment of the Supreme Court has resolved it either as of this writing. There are two honest ways to read the relationship. One is that Parliament, in codifying a preliminary inquiry mechanism for the first time, was entitled to draw the boundary differently from a judicial exception carved out under a different, narrower statute, and that a punishment-band test is itself a legitimate proxy for offence seriousness. The other is that Lalita Kumari was decided as a constitutional reading of what “information disclosing a cognizable offence” means under Article 21, protecting a citizen’s access to prompt registration, and that a legislature cannot widen a court-created safeguard against arbitrary police inaction simply by relabelling it a statutory power. Both readings have force. Advocates challenging a preliminary inquiry conducted under section 173(3), where the underlying offence does not fall into any of the five Lalita Kumari categories, should expect this exact tension to be the live argument, not a settled point either side can assume away. Bar and Bench and LiveLaw are useful trackers for when a High Court or the Supreme Court first squarely addresses this question in a reported order.

From information to FIR: the decision path

flowchart TD
    A[Information received by police officer] --> B{Discloses a cognizable offence?}
    B -- No --> C[Non-cognizable route: entry in diary, magistrate order needed to investigate]
    B -- Yes --> D{Punishable three to seven years?}
    D -- No --> E[FIR registered under section 173 sub-section 1]
    D -- Yes --> F{DSP or higher approves preliminary inquiry?}
    F -- No --> E
    F -- Yes --> G[Preliminary inquiry within fourteen days]
    G --> H{Prima facie case found?}
    H -- Yes --> E
    H -- No --> I[No FIR registered]
    E --> J[Free copy given forthwith, section 173 sub-section 2]
    B -- Officer refuses to record --> K[Written complaint to Superintendent of Police, section 173 sub-section 4]
    K --> L[SP directs investigation, or complainant approaches Magistrate]

Where section 173 stops and other provisions begin

Section 173 governs registration. It does not govern the sixty or ninety day chargesheet clock, which sits in section 187(3) BNSS, the default bail provision, successor to the CrPC’s remand provisions, and it does not govern the filing of the police report at the close of investigation, which is section 193 BNSS, successor to the old section 173 CrPC. That last point is worth stating carefully, because it is the single most confusable pair of numbers in the entire recodification: the CrPC’s section 173 dealt with the completed police report, filed at the end of an investigation, while the BNSS’s section 173 deals with the very first entry, made before an investigation has even begun. Two different subjects, in two different codes, sharing one number by coincidence of renumbering. A junior checking a CrPC-era judgment against the BNSS should read the full CrPC to BNSS section mapping rather than assume the number carries forward its old meaning.

The classification decision that gates the whole provision, cognizable versus non-cognizable, is addressed on its own terms in this blog’s explainer on that distinction, and whether an offence is bailable once an FIR is registered is a separate question covered in the piece on bailable versus non-bailable offences. If the FIR that results from section 173 is later challenged as vague or as failing to disclose specific allegations against a named accused, the standard courts apply is covered in FIR quashing orders must state the allegations, and the broader inherent-powers route for quashing an FIR altogether runs through section 528 BNSS, successor to section 482 CrPC. Where the underlying complaint is a matrimonial dispute, one of the five Lalita Kumari categories discussed above, the specific quashing standard applied to that class of FIR is covered in section 498A misuse and quashing. Anticipatory bail, which frequently becomes the accused’s first response to a freshly registered FIR, is covered separately in anticipatory bail under BNSS section 482, a different 482 from the inherent-powers provision, and a distinction worth holding carefully given how often the two get conflated. Once an FIR is registered and the clock on investigation starts running, the fixed windows that follow, remand, chargesheet filing, and the rest, are collected in the BNSS statutory timelines checklist. For the wider context of what changed across all three new codes and when, see the overview of BNS, BNSS, and BSA.

Where the underlying offence itself needs mapping from an old IPC number to its BNS equivalent, this blog maintains a verified IPC to BNS section mapping, and the evidentiary consequences of a case that straddles the 1 July 2024 transition, including whether older Supreme Court precedent decided under the IPC still applies to a BNS charge, are addressed in do IPC precedents apply under the BNS. A lawyer confirming that Lalita Kumari itself has not been overruled or distinguished on this point should run the same good-law check before citing it in a fresh petition; a citator that flags whether a Constitution Bench judgment has been referred to a larger bench or doubted in a later decision is the kind of check worth running before relying on any pre-2024 authority in a BNSS matter, and Niyam’s good-law checking is built for exactly that step.

When the dispute is not about the FIR itself but about whether the police recorded it in time, and a magistrate’s order under section 173(4) is the next step, drafting that application accurately from the statutory text matters more than paraphrasing it from a coaching-note summary; a research assistant that pulls the verified section text and directly relevant judgments rather than a generic search result saves the advocate from citing a paraphrase that turns out to be wrong on a fourteen-day window or a punishment band.

Frequently asked questions

What is BNSS section 173?

Section 173 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 is the provision governing how information about a cognizable offence is recorded by the police. It is the direct successor to section 154 of the CrPC, 1973, and covers oral and electronic reporting, a free copy to the informant, a preliminary inquiry for certain offences, and the remedy available if a police officer refuses to record information.

Is registering an FIR mandatory under section 173 BNSS?

Yes, for any information that discloses a cognizable offence. The officer in charge of a police station is required to reduce the information to writing and register it. The only recognised departure from immediate registration is the preliminary inquiry under section 173(3), which applies to a narrow, sentence-defined band of offences and is not a general discretion to withhold registration.

What is the preliminary inquiry under section 173(3) BNSS?

It is a check, permitted for a cognizable offence punishable with imprisonment of three years or more but less than seven years, to establish whether a prima facie case exists before an FIR is registered. It requires the prior permission of an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police and must be completed within fourteen days.

Does the CrPC have an equivalent to the section 173(3) preliminary inquiry?

No. Section 154 CrPC contained no preliminary inquiry mechanism in its text. The concept was read into the CrPC by the Supreme Court in Lalita Kumari v Government of UP, which permitted a preliminary inquiry only in five defined categories of case, with a seven-day limit. The BNSS is the first time preliminary inquiry has been written into the statute itself, and it uses a different, broader test.

What did Lalita Kumari v Government of UP actually hold?

A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held, on 12 November 2013, that registration of an FIR is mandatory under section 154 CrPC once information disclosing a cognizable offence is received, and that the police have no discretion to conduct an unstructured preliminary check before registering. It permitted a limited preliminary inquiry only in five specified categories, to be completed within seven days.

Is the section 173(3) preliminary inquiry wider than what Lalita Kumari allowed?

This is genuinely contested. Lalita Kumari’s five categories were defined by subject matter; section 173(3) is defined by punishment band, three to seven years, regardless of subject matter, and gives fourteen days rather than seven. Whether that recalibration is a legitimate legislative choice or an unconstitutional widening of a safeguard the Constitution Bench built around Article 21 has not been settled by a reported Supreme Court judgment as of this writing.

Can information about a cognizable offence be given electronically under section 173 BNSS?

Yes. Section 173(1) permits information to be given by electronic communication to the officer in charge of a police station. The informant must then sign the recorded statement in person within three days of the electronic communication for it to be treated as taken on record.

Is the informant entitled to a free copy of the FIR?

Yes, under section 173(2). A copy of the information as recorded must be given, free of cost, to the informant or the victim, and the statute uses the word forthwith, meaning immediately rather than within a fixed number of days.

What happens if a police officer refuses to record an FIR under section 173?

Section 173(4) allows the aggrieved person to send the substance of the information, in writing and by post, to the Superintendent of Police, who must investigate personally or direct a subordinate officer to do so if satisfied a cognizable offence is disclosed. The aggrieved person may alternatively approach the jurisdictional magistrate to order an investigation.

Who must record information under section 173 when the offence is against a woman?

For offences under sections 64 to 71, 74 to 79, or section 124 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, broadly the sexual offence and acid-attack provisions, information given by a woman must be recorded by a woman police officer or any woman officer, under the proviso to section 173(1).

Does section 173 BNSS have a special procedure for informants with disabilities?

Yes. Under the proviso to section 173(1), where a person with a temporary or permanent mental or physical disability gives information about a cognizable offence, the police officer must record it at that person’s residence or a place of the person’s choice, with an interpreter or special educator present, and the statement must be videographed and subsequently got recorded by a magistrate.

Is BNSS section 173 the same subject as CrPC section 173?

No, and this is a common source of confusion. CrPC section 173 dealt with the police report filed at the close of investigation. BNSS section 173 deals with the very first recording of information, at the start of a case. The subject that used to be CrPC section 173 is now BNSS section 193.

What is the outer time limit for a preliminary inquiry under section 173(3)?

Fourteen days. The statute does not state a consequence for exceeding that limit; it does not say the FIR is automatically registered, nor does it say the complaint lapses. In practice, the fourteen-day figure functions as the outer boundary of the inquiry itself rather than as a trigger for a further step.

Does section 173 BNSS apply to non-cognizable offences?

No. Section 173 is triggered specifically by information disclosing a cognizable offence. Information about a non-cognizable offence follows a different route, entered in the station diary, with investigation requiring a magistrate’s order rather than proceeding on the officer’s own authority.

Can a zero FIR be registered under section 173 BNSS?

Section 173 does not use the phrase zero FIR, but the provision’s requirement to register information regardless of territorial jurisdiction, with the FIR transferred afterward to the competent station, is what practitioners call a zero FIR. A dedicated explainer on how that mechanism works in practice sits elsewhere on this blog.

Is Lalita Kumari still good law after the BNSS came into force?

The judgment interpreted section 154 CrPC, which stood repealed for offences occurring on or after 1 July 2024, subject to the BNSS’s savings provision in section 531. Its core holding on mandatory registration has not been overruled and continues to be cited for BNSS matters, but its preliminary-inquiry category list sits alongside, and in tension with, the differently structured preliminary inquiry Parliament has since written into section 173(3).

What rank of officer must approve a preliminary inquiry under section 173(3)?

An officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police. The station house officer conducting the inquiry cannot authorise it alone.

Where does section 173 sit within the BNSS?

Section 173 is in Chapter XIII of the BNSS, “Information to the Police and their Powers to Investigate,” which is the chapter that opens the procedural sequence running from first information through investigation, arrest, remand, and the eventual filing of the police report.