TL;DR: You are the prosecution’s star witness in your own fraud case, and if you skip the hearing the case can collapse or a warrant can be issued against you, the victim. BNSS 2023 lets a witness depose over video conferencing under Section 530 and related provisions, so if you have moved cities or gone abroad you can usually apply to avoid travelling back. Bring your bank statement, the NCRP acknowledgement, the 1930 helpline record, and a Section 63 BSA certificate for any screenshot or electronic record you rely on.
On this page
- Why you, the complainant, are the case
- The chain from ncrp complaint to trial and how long each stage takes
- What the summons actually requires
- What happens if you ignore it
- Travelling allowance and witness expenses
- The bnss provisions on video conferencing, the single most useful thing here
- What to bring to the witness box
- What happens in the witness box
- Can you settle and get your money back
- How restitution and return of frozen money actually works
- If you have moved cities or gone abroad
- What real complainants report
- Frequently asked questions
Why you, the complainant, are the case
In a UPI fraud or an online fraud FIR, you are not a bystander who happened to see something. You are the person the money was taken from, the person who filed the cyber crime complaint on cybercrime.gov.in, and usually the only witness who can testify to the actual transaction, the actual loss, and the actual identification of what happened to your account.
Courts call this the “star witness” position informally. It is not a formal legal category, but it describes reality. If a case rests on your testimony that you transferred money after being deceived, and that testimony never gets recorded, the prosecution’s version of events has a hole in it that no amount of forensic evidence usually fills on its own.
That is why, months or sometimes years after you filed a complaint and mostly forgot about it, a summons arrives asking you to appear before a magistrate or a sessions court, often in a district you no longer live in. The case did not disappear. It moved through investigation, a chargesheet, and possibly a committal to a sessions court, and now it has reached the stage where oral evidence gets recorded.
This is also why the case can fail if you do not show up. A public prosecutor cannot manufacture your testimony. If you never depose, and no other witness can establish the loss and the modus operandi with the same directness, the court can acquit the accused for want of evidence. Your absence does not just inconvenience the system. It can end the very case you started.
Why almost nothing is written about this
Most cyber fraud coverage in India stops at “how to file a complaint” or “how to freeze the fraudster’s account.” The complainant’s journey after that point, through the FIR, the chargesheet, and eventually the witness box, gets almost no attention. That gap is what this piece tries to close.
The chain from ncrp complaint to trial and how long each stage takes
Understanding the summons means understanding where it sits in a sequence that started when you filed your complaint.
| Stage | What happens | Rough timeline |
|---|---|---|
| NCRP complaint on cybercrime.gov.in | You report the fraud, get an acknowledgement number | Day 0 |
| 1930 helpline call | Real-time freeze request sent to the bank or payment gateway | Same day, ideally within the golden hour |
| FIR registration | Police convert the complaint into a formal FIR, or register a Zero FIR if loss exceeds ₹10 lakh (i4c.mha.gov.in, reviewed 19 August 2026) | Days to a few weeks |
| Investigation | Police collect your statement, bank records, IP logs, and other digital evidence | 3 to 6 months for a simple UPI or OTP fraud, 6 to 12 months for phishing or identity theft, longer for cross-border cases |
| Chargesheet | Police file the chargesheet in the magistrate’s court within the BNSS timeline, usually 60 or 90 days from arrest, extendable to 180 days with recorded reasons | Concludes the investigation phase |
| Committal to sessions court | If the offence is triable exclusively by a sessions court, the magistrate commits the case under the BNSS provision equivalent to the old Section 209 CrPC | Weeks to a few months after chargesheet |
| Trial and witness examination | The court frames charges and starts recording evidence, complainant is usually among the first prosecution witnesses called | Months to years, depending on court pendency |
Two things make this slower for a cyber fraud case than for many other crimes. First, digital evidence often needs forensic verification, which the mandatory forensic visit requirement under BNSS has made a formal step in serious cases. Second, if the accused is not traced, arrested, or extradited quickly, which is common when the fraud operation is based outside your state or outside India, the case can sit at the investigation stage for a long time before it ever reaches trial.
By the time the summons reaches you, it is easy to have forgotten the specifics. That is normal. The court expects you to refresh your memory from your own statement and documents, not to recall every detail unaided.
What the summons actually requires
A witness summons under BNSS is a court order, not a request. If you are unsure whether a document you received is actually this kind of summons rather than something else, triaging a legal notice, a police notice and a summons walks through telling them apart before you respond. It will name the court, the case number, the date and time you are expected to appear, and usually a brief description of the case, sometimes just the FIR number and section.
Read it for three things before anything else. The court and its location, since this tells you whether you can attend in person easily or need to plan travel. The date, since a summons issued weeks in advance still needs a response, not a last-minute scramble. And whether it asks you to bring specific documents, which sometimes happens if the investigating officer has flagged that you hold originals of something like a bank passbook.
If you cannot attend on the given date for a genuine reason, illness, travel, work commitment, the correct response is to apply for an adjournment or exemption from personal appearance through the public prosecutor or, if you have engaged one, your own counsel. Silence is the mistake that causes problems, not a reasoned request for a different date.
What happens if you ignore it
Chapter VI of BNSS, titled processes to compel appearance, governs what a court can do when a summoned person does not show up. The sequence is not immediate escalation to arrest.
First non-appearance. The court typically issues a fresh summons, or in some cases a bailable warrant, which requires you to furnish a bail bond assuring the court you will appear on the next date.
Repeated non-appearance. If bailable process also fails, the court can issue a non-bailable warrant (NBW) against you. BNSS Section 73 deals with the bailable warrant of arrest, and the surrounding sections in that chapter deal with the escalation to non-bailable process. An NBW means the police can actually arrest you and produce you before the court, exactly as they would for an accused who is evading appearance. This applies to a witness just as it applies to an accused, and it is the part complainants find hardest to believe, because they filed the case as the victim, not the wrongdoer.
Practical reality. Courts do not usually rush to an NBW against a genuine complainant on the first missed date. But a pattern of ignored summons, especially where no adjournment application was ever filed, does lead there. If you receive a summons and know you genuinely cannot attend, file for exemption. Do not simply not show up.
| What you receive | What you must do | What happens if you do not |
|---|---|---|
| First summons | Attend, or apply for adjournment through the prosecutor | Court may reissue summons or issue a bailable warrant |
| Bailable warrant | Furnish the bail bond and appear on the new date | Court can escalate to a non-bailable warrant |
| Non-bailable warrant | Surrender or apply to have it recalled through counsel | Police can arrest and produce you before the court |
| Video conferencing permission granted | Depose from the designated remote point on time, with ID proof | Treated the same as non-appearance if you skip it |
Travelling allowance and witness expenses
Section 312 of the old CrPC allowed criminal courts to direct payment of reasonable expenses to witnesses, and this power continues in substance under BNSS. In practice this covers travelling allowance and a subsistence allowance for the day or days you are required to be present.
Several High Courts have their own detailed witness expense rules. Delhi’s rules on witness expenses in criminal cases, for instance, set out categories of allowance under a dedicated chapter of the High Court rules. Other states run similar schemes under names like witness batta, with fixed rates depending on the distance travelled and whether you are required to stay overnight.
The practical route to actually being paid is not automatic. You generally have to make an oral or written request to the court, through the public prosecutor if it is a state case, at the time you appear, or immediately after. The court’s reader or the concerned section officer processes the batta certificate. If a defence lawyer or a private complainant summoned you (rare in a cyber fraud FIR, since the state is usually the prosecuting party), that party is the one responsible for depositing the process fee that funds your batta in the first place.
Do not assume this will be offered to you unprompted. Ask the prosecutor handling the case, or your own counsel if you have one, what the local court’s process is for claiming travelling allowance, and ask before you leave the court premises on the day you depose, since claiming it after the fact is considerably harder.
The bnss provisions on video conferencing, the single most useful thing here
This is the part that changes the calculation for most complainants who no longer live where the FIR was registered.
BNSS 2023 defines “audio-video electronic means” broadly in Section 2(1)(a), to include video conferencing for recording statements and evidence. Building on that, Section 530 BNSS is the overarching enabling provision stating that trials, inquiries, and other proceedings under BNSS may be held in electronic mode, including through audio-video electronic means, unless the accused specifically objects on stated grounds and the court agrees the physical presence of a party is necessary.
Section 254 BNSS specifically permits the use of audio-video electronic means for recording evidence in sessions cases, covering witnesses, police officers, public servants, and experts. Section 180(3) BNSS additionally allows the police, at the investigation stage, to record a witness’s statement through audio-video electronic means rather than only in writing, which matters earlier in the process, before the trial even begins.
Alongside the statutory provisions, the e-Committee of the Supreme Court of India issued Model Rules for Video Conferencing for Courts, adopted in most High Courts in some form. Under these rules, video conferencing in a High Court and the courts under it follows that High Court’s own video conferencing rules, and where a High Court has not framed its own rules, the model rules apply by default. The rules require that a summons directing appearance by video conferencing name the date, time, and venue of the designated remote point, and that you carry proof of identity, since the officer at the remote point has to verify who you are before the link is treated as your appearance. If you have lost the phone that carries your digital identity since you filed the complaint, recovering Aadhaar, DigiLocker and UPI access after losing your device is worth sorting well before that identity check, not on the morning of the hearing.
How to actually apply for remote deposition
There is no separate online portal for this. The mechanism is a written application, usually moved by the public prosecutor on your request, or by your own counsel, asking the trial court to permit your examination through video conferencing under Section 530 BNSS, citing your changed city of residence, distance, cost, or medical reason.
The court has discretion. It is far more likely to grant this where the reason is genuine and where the accused’s side does not show that your physical presence is necessary for something specific, such as identification in person. For a straightforward transaction and loss deposition, courts have increasingly granted this rather than insisting on personal appearance, particularly since the pandemic-era infrastructure of video conferencing facilities in district courts is now largely in place. Some states have built out over a thousand such facilities specifically to support witness examination without travel.
If you have already moved abroad, the same route applies in principle, though practical hurdles around internet connectivity, identifying a suitable remote point (an Indian consulate or embassy is often used), and time zone coordination for the hearing schedule need to be worked out with the court in advance, again through an application rather than assuming it will be arranged automatically.
For a fuller picture of how these provisions interact with the rest of the new criminal procedure code, see BNSS statutory timelines checklist and the new criminal laws overview.
What to bring to the witness box
Whether you appear in person or over video conferencing, the documents you bring or produce electronically are what actually anchor your testimony to something the court can rely on beyond your memory. The discipline for assembling this kit is the same one covered in what to preserve before you call a lawyer, just applied months later at the deposition stage instead of in the first 48 hours.
Your bank statement, covering the period of the disputed transaction, ideally a certified copy obtained from the bank rather than a personal printout, since a certified statement carries its own evidentiary weight.
The NCRP acknowledgement, the number and copy generated when you first filed on cybercrime.gov.in, which establishes the date you reported the fraud and the details you gave at the time.
The 1930 helpline record, if you called the helpline separately or in addition to the portal complaint, since this often triggers the fastest freeze action and its ticket number is a useful timestamp.
Screenshots of the fraudulent communication or transaction, whether that is a phishing message, a fake payment link, or a spoofed call log, understanding that a screenshot alone is not automatically admissible.
A Section 63 BSA certificate for any electronic record you want the court to actually rely on as evidence, not just as something you narrate. Section 63 BSA and electronic evidence explains this in detail, but the short version is that a screenshot, a call log printout, or a bank statement PDF is secondary electronic evidence, and it needs a certificate identifying how it was produced and, where relevant, a hash value confirming it has not been altered. Without that certificate, the opposing side can object to the document being taken on record at all, regardless of how genuine it actually is.
Your own counsel, if you have engaged one, or the investigating officer, should be arranging this certificate well before the hearing date, not on the morning of your deposition. If nobody has raised it with you, ask.
What happens in the witness box
The examination follows a fixed order, now under Section 138 of the BSA, the direct successor to the old Evidence Act provision of the same number and structure.
Examination in chief. The public prosecutor asks you to narrate what happened, guided by your earlier statement to police, without leading questions that suggest the answer. This is where you walk the court through how the fraud occurred, what you lost, and how you discovered it.
Cross examination. Defence counsel then questions you, and here leading questions are permitted, since the purpose is to test your account, expose inconsistencies, or suggest an alternative version of events. This can feel adversarial even though you are the victim, not the accused. That is the structure of a criminal trial, not a comment on how the court views you.
Re-examination. If cross examination raises new matters, the prosecutor can ask further questions limited to clarifying those points.
What “declared hostile” means and why it should not worry most complainants
If, during examination, a witness’s testimony in court contradicts what they told the police earlier, and shows signs of turning against the party that called them, the court can permit that party to question its own witness as if cross examining them, a step commonly described as declaring the witness hostile. This is governed by the BSA provision on the order of examinations, now numbered differently from the old Section 154 of the Evidence Act, but preserving the same substance.
For most cyber fraud complainants this is not a realistic risk. You are testifying about your own loss, not protecting someone else or facing pressure to change your account. Being declared hostile happens far more often with witnesses who have some relationship to the accused, who face intimidation, or who were reluctant participants to begin with. If you simply tell the truth as you experienced it, consistent with your original statement, this scenario should not arise.
Can you settle and get your money back
This is where complainants get confused between three different things that sound similar but work very differently.
Compounding an offence means the complainant and the accused settle, and the court records the settlement, which can end the prosecution for that specific offence. This is only available for offences listed in the compounding table under Section 359 BNSS, the successor to the old Section 320 CrPC, and the table specifies, offence by offence, whether it can be compounded freely or only with the court’s permission, and who is entitled to compound it.
Whether cyber fraud offences are compoundable at all depends entirely on which sections of the BNS the FIR is registered under. A straightforward cheating charge is often compoundable with the court’s permission, since the person cheated is typically the one entitled to forgive it. But most cyber fraud FIRs also invoke sections dealing with computer-related offences under the Information Technology Act, and organised or aggravated forms of fraud, some of which are not compoundable at all, particularly where the offence is treated as one against the state rather than purely an individual, or where it falls under provisions like organised crime under Section 111 BNS in larger cyber fraud syndicates. Check the specific sections in your FIR and chargesheet with your counsel before assuming a settlement will end the case.
A compromise that is not formal compounding can still happen informally, where the accused returns money and the complainant loses interest in pursuing the matter, but this does not automatically terminate the prosecution if the underlying offence is not compoundable. The state can, and often does, continue prosecuting even where the victim has been repaid, because a fraud offence is treated as a wrong against society, not only against you.
The practical upshot is that recovering your money and ending the criminal case are two separate tracks, and getting your money back does not necessarily mean the case against the accused disappears, nor should a complainant assume it does before checking with counsel which sections actually apply.
How restitution and return of frozen money actually works
This is the part where most victims are left in the dark, and it deserves more attention than it typically gets.
When you report a fraud promptly through cybercrime.gov.in or the 1930 helpline, the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System sends a real-time alert to the receiving bank or payment gateway, which can freeze the funds in the fraudster’s account before they are withdrawn or moved further. I4C has reported that this mechanism has helped save several thousand crore rupees in aggregate across cases (i4c.mha.gov.in, reviewed 19 August 2026).
Freezing the money is not the same as getting it back into your account. Once funds are frozen, they typically sit in the recipient account under a lien while the investigation proceeds, and if your own account elsewhere is the one caught under a lien from someone else’s fraud complaint, the release ladder for getting a frozen bank account unfrozen covers that separate side of the same problem. Getting them released to you as the victim usually requires one of a few routes: an order from the investigating officer or the court directing release of the frozen amount to you as the person entitled to it, which often only happens once the police have satisfied themselves the funds are indeed proceeds of the specific fraud you reported and not commingled with other money in that account, or a formal application for interim release of case property under the court’s inherent powers, or resolution at the end of trial through a restitution or compensation order against the convicted accused.
This can take a long time, sometimes far longer than victims expect, particularly where the frozen account holds funds from multiple victims and the bank or the investigating agency has to apportion the amount correctly before any release. If your money has been sitting frozen for months with no update, the correct step is a written application to the investigating officer, copied to the court once the case is before it, formally requesting release or at least a status update, rather than assuming the system will proactively return the funds to you.
Where the case reaches conviction, courts can also order the convicted person to pay compensation to the victim, an avenue worth raising with the prosecutor if the frozen amount does not fully cover your loss and the accused has other assets. This is a separate order from the property release described above, and your counsel should specifically ask the court to consider it at the sentencing stage if it has not been raised earlier.
If you have moved cities or gone abroad
A move should never be treated as a reason to ignore a summons. It is a reason to apply for an accommodation, and courts routinely grant these when the request is made properly and early.
If you have moved to a different city within India, the video conferencing route described above is usually the most efficient option. Apply through the prosecutor or your own counsel, citing your new address, and ask that the deposition happen from the nearest district court’s remote point or a facility the court designates.
If you have moved abroad, the same principle applies, but coordination takes longer. You will likely need to identify a suitable remote location, often the nearest Indian consulate or a facility the court is willing to accept, agree on a hearing time that works across time zones, and confirm your identity verification method in advance. Build in more lead time than you would for a domestic move, since coordinating with a foreign posting or consulate adds administrative steps the court is not used to handling quickly.
In either case, update your address with the investigating officer and the court as soon as you know you are moving, not after a summons sent to your old address bounces back or goes unanswered. A summons that never reaches you because it was sent to an outdated address can still trigger the escalation described earlier in this piece, since the court’s record only shows non-appearance, not the reason for it. If a summons was returned undelivered and you only found out about the case much later, raise this immediately with the court through counsel; courts are generally receptive to setting aside a warrant issued in these circumstances once the genuine reason is placed on record.
What real complainants report
Complainant experiences in cyber fraud cases are not a well-documented category online. Most public discussion of India’s cyber fraud response focuses on how to file a complaint and how quickly money gets frozen, not on what happens to the person who filed it once the case moves into the court system months or years later.
What emerges from broader coverage of victims navigating this system is a consistent pattern: initial relief when a portion of the money is frozen or recovered quickly, followed by long silence from the investigating agency once the case moves into the chargesheet and trial stage, with victims often finding out about a hearing date only when the summons physically arrives. This gap between the fast, visible first response and the slow, largely invisible middle of a case is where most of the frustration in this process sits, and it is exactly the gap this piece has tried to map out stage by stage.
If you are trying to work out where your own case actually stands, checking the case status directly on the eCourts portal using your case or FIR number, covered in checking case status on eCourts and the NJDG, is more reliable than waiting for the next communication from the investigating officer.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to attend in person or can I always ask for video conferencing?
There is no automatic right to depose remotely. You have to apply, usually through the public prosecutor or your own counsel, under Section 530 BNSS, and the court decides based on your reason and whether the accused’s side objects on specific, stated grounds.
What if I never filed anything on cybercrime.gov.in and the FIR was registered straight at the police station?
The summons and the procedure that follows are the same either way. The NCRP acknowledgement is useful supporting evidence of your timeline, but its absence does not affect your standing as the complainant or prosecution witness.
Can the accused’s lawyer ask me anything they want in cross examination?
No. Cross examination has to be relevant to the facts in issue or to your credibility as a witness. Questions that are purely harassing or irrelevant can be objected to by the prosecutor, and the court controls the scope.
Will I have to pay to travel to the hearing myself?
You can claim travelling allowance and subsistence expenses from the court, typically through the public prosecutor, under provisions that continue the substance of the old Section 312 CrPC. Ask about the local process rather than assuming it happens automatically.
If the accused pays back my money, does the case end automatically?
Not automatically. Whether the case can end depends on whether the specific offences in your FIR are compoundable under the Section 359 BNSS table. Many cyber fraud cases involve non-compoundable offences even after full repayment.
What if I have already spent or moved the frozen money and can’t remember exact figures?
Bring whatever documentation you do have, your bank statement is the primary record the court will rely on rather than your memory of exact figures, so gaps in recollection are less damaging than gaps in the paper trail.
Can the court issue an arrest warrant against me even though I am the victim?
Yes, if you are validly summoned as a witness and repeatedly fail to appear without applying for an adjournment or exemption. This is uncommon for a genuine complainant who responds to the process, but the legal power exists and has been used.
How do I know if my chargesheet has even been filed yet?
Check your case status on the eCourts portal using the FIR number or CNR number if one has been assigned, or ask the investigating officer directly. A tool that lets you search Indian case law and track a matter with citations to the underlying record can help you understand the current procedural posture once the matter is on a court docket, though the direct source for filing status remains the eCourts case status search.
Does the Section 63 BSA certificate have to come from the bank or can I sign it myself?
It depends on what the record is and who extracted it. For a bank statement, the bank’s own record-keeper typically signs the certifying part. For a screenshot you took yourself, you may be able to certify the extraction, but a technical verification of the hash value, the second part of the certificate, usually needs a person with the technical competence to confirm it. Your counsel or the investigating officer should guide you on which route applies to your specific documents.
What happens at trial if the accused was never traced or arrested?
The case can remain at the investigation stage indefinitely in the worst scenario, since a chargesheet against an untraced or absconding accused is filed differently, and trial in absentia is only available in narrow, defined circumstances. Trial in absentia for a proclaimed offender under BNSS explains when this route becomes available and what it requires.
Can I get compensation beyond just my frozen money being returned?
Yes, courts can order compensation to a victim as part of sentencing on conviction, separate from any release of frozen funds tied specifically to the fraud transaction. Raise this with the prosecutor before the case concludes, since it is not always considered unless specifically requested.
Is there a time limit on how long I can be kept waiting as a witness before the case is dismissed for delay?
There is no fixed statutory deadline that automatically ends a pending criminal case purely due to delay, though BNSS has introduced tighter timelines at the chargesheet and committal stages than the old CrPC had. Extreme, unexplained delay can be a ground to seek quashing or expedition through the High Court in genuinely exceptional cases, but this is not routine relief for an ordinary pending matter.