# BNSS section 356: trial in absentia of a proclaimed offender

**TL;DR:** Section 356 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 lets a criminal court try, convict, and sentence a proclaimed offender who cannot be arrested, without the accused ever appearing in person. The CrPC had no equivalent power to conclude a trial and pronounce judgment in the continued absence of the accused. The provision is conditional on a proclamation under section 84, a ninety day wait after charge, defined publication steps, and state funded counsel, and it caps the accused's right of appeal once convicted.

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## On this page

- [What section 356 actually says](#what-section-356-actually-says)
- [Before section 356 applies: the proclamation under section 84](#before-section-356-applies-the-proclamation-under-section-84)
- [The four preconditions under section 356(2)](#the-four-preconditions-under-section-3562)
- [The ninety day wait and the written reasons requirement](#the-ninety-day-wait-and-the-written-reasons-requirement)
- [Counsel at state expense: section 356(3)](#counsel-at-state-expense-section-3563)
- [The judgment, and what happens if the accused later appears](#the-judgment-and-what-happens-if-the-accused-later-appears)
- [The appeal bar in section 356(7)](#the-appeal-bar-in-section-3567)
- [CrPC compared: why this is genuinely new law](#crpc-compared-why-this-is-genuinely-new-law)
- [The proclamation to absentia trial sequence](#the-proclamation-to-absentia-trial-sequence)
- [The constitutional objection: Article 21 and the right to be present](#the-constitutional-objection-article-21-and-the-right-to-be-present)
- [Where the law is still unsettled](#where-the-law-is-still-unsettled)
- [Frequently asked questions](#frequently-asked-questions)

## What section 356 actually says

Section 356 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, headed "Inquiry, trial or judgment in absentia of proclaimed offender," is set out in the bare act on [Indian Kanoon](https://indiankanoon.org/doc/105262049/). It runs to eight sub-sections. Sub-section (1) is the operative power: it opens with a non obstante clause, "notwithstanding anything contained in this Sanhita or in any other law for the time being in force," and provides that when a person declared a proclaimed offender has absconded to evade trial and there is no immediate prospect of arresting him, that absconding "shall be deemed to operate as a waiver of the right of such person to be present and tried in person." The court may then, after recording reasons in writing, proceed with the trial "in the like manner and with like effect as if he was present" and pronounce judgment. A proviso attached to the same sub-section fixes a floor: the court cannot commence the trial until ninety days have passed from the date the charge was framed.

Sub-section (2) lists the steps the court must confirm before invoking sub-section (1): two consecutive arrest warrants issued at least thirty days apart, publication in a national or local daily circulating at the accused's last known address, notice to a relative or friend if any, and information affixed at the accused's residence and displayed at the relevant police station. Sub-section (3) requires an advocate at the expense of the state for an unrepresented proclaimed offender. Sub-section (4) allows depositions of prosecution witnesses recorded at a prior stage, including under the ordinary evidence-in-absence provision, to be used against the proclaimed offender at trial. Sub-section (5) prefers audio-video recording of depositions. Sub-section (6) says voluntary absence after the trial has begun does not stop the trial reaching judgment, even if the accused is later arrested or appears. Sub-section (7) is the appeal bar: no appeal lies unless the proclaimed offender presents himself before the appellate court. Sub-section (8) lets a state government extend the section, by notification, to any absconder covered by section 84(1), a broader category than a formally declared proclaimed offender.

Read together, the eight sub-sections describe a single sequence: a proclamation must already exist, four specific steps must be completed and verified, ninety days must pass, the trial then runs to a verdict with state funded counsel standing in for the absent accused, and the resulting conviction is largely unappealable until the convict turns up. Each of those pieces is worth taking on its own, because the safeguards are where the disputes are actually happening in court right now. For the wider context of what changed across all three new codes on 1 July 2024, see this blog's [overview of BNS, BNSS, and BSA](/blog/new-criminal-laws-bns-bnss-bsa), and for the section-by-section correspondence between the old code and the new one, the [CrPC to BNSS section mapping](/blog/bnss-crpc-section-mapping).

## Before section 356 applies: the proclamation under section 84

Section 356 does not create the status of proclaimed offender. That status comes from section 84 of the BNSS, "Proclamation for person absconding," also read from [the bare act on Indian Kanoon](https://indiankanoon.org/doc/148501062/). Section 84(1) lets a court publish a written proclamation requiring a person to appear at a specified place and time, not less than thirty days from the date of publication, where the court has reason to believe that a person against whom it has issued a warrant has absconded or is concealing himself so the warrant cannot be executed. Section 84(2) sets out how that proclamation must be published, including public reading at a conspicuous place in the person's town or village of ordinary residence. Section 84(3) makes a written statement by the issuing court, certifying the day of publication and the manner of compliance, conclusive evidence that the section's publication requirements were met.

Section 84(4) is the sub-section that actually produces a "proclaimed offender." It applies only where the proclamation under sub-section (1) concerns a person accused of an offence punishable with imprisonment of ten years or more, imprisonment for life, or the death penalty. For an accused in that band, and after such inquiry as it thinks fit, the court may pronounce the person a proclaimed offender, a narrower category than the ordinary proclaimed person under section 84(1), which applies regardless of the punishment attached to the offence. An offence such as organised crime under [BNS section 111](/blog/bns-organised-crime-section-111), which carries a life sentence or death in its more serious clauses, sits comfortably inside that band; a large share of theft or cheating cases does not. Section 356(8), the notification clause, exists precisely because Parliament recognised that gap: without it, a state could not extend trial in absentia to an absconder proclaimed under section 84(1) but never declared a proclaimed offender, because the offence falls below the ten year mark.

This distinction matters more in practice than it looks. A defence advocate reviewing an order under section 356 should check whether a proclamation under section 84 was issued at all, whether the specific declaration of "proclaimed offender" under section 84(4) was made and on what punishment basis, and whether the state has issued a section 356(8) notification if the underlying offence does not independently meet the ten year threshold. Skipping that chain and assuming section 356 applies to any absconding accused is the single most common error this provision invites. The property attachment consequences that can follow under section 85, and the day counts attached to each stage of the chain, are worth checking against the [BNSS statutory timelines checklist](/blog/bnss-statutory-timelines-checklist).

## The four preconditions under section 356(2)

Section 356(2) is drafted as a checklist, and courts have started treating it that way. The provision requires the trial court to satisfy itself, before invoking sub-section (1), that four things have happened.

First, two consecutive warrants of arrest, at least thirty days apart. A single unexecuted warrant is not enough. Second, publication in a national or local daily circulating at the accused's last known address, informing him that failure to appear within thirty days of publication means the trial proceeds in his absence. Third, notice to a relative or friend of the accused, if any exists and can be identified. Fourth, notice affixed at a conspicuous part of the accused's residence and displayed at the police station covering his last known address.

None of these four steps is discretionary once the court decides to proceed under section 356(1). A Jharkhand High Court order in *Rahul Kumar Prasad Verma alias Rahul Verma v. State of Jharkhand*, Criminal Miscellaneous Petition No. 3676 of 2025, decided on 30 March 2026 and reported on [Indian Kanoon](https://indiankanoon.org/doc/85095639/), shows what happens when the checklist is skipped. The proceeding began, as most section 356 matters will, with a [FIR registered under BNSS section 173](/blog/bnss-section-173-fir-registration) long before the accused was ever proclaimed. The petitioner sought to quash orders of the Special Judge, POCSO Act, Dhanbad, dated 25 November 2021 and 18 June 2024, including a non bailable warrant and the framing of a charge in his absence, on the ground that the charge had been framed "without complying the requirement of section 356(2)." The High Court did not decide the point on the spot. It directed the Special Judge to file a report explaining the circumstances in which the charge was framed against the accused in his absence without compliance with section 356(2), and adjourned the matter pending that report. The order is narrow, procedural, and does not settle the underlying constitutional question, but it confirms that trial courts are already being pulled up on section 356(2) compliance within two years of the provision coming into force, and that a defective proclamation-to-trial chain is a live, litigable ground.

A defence advocate checking compliance should ask for the case diary entries recording each of the four steps, the dated newspaper clipping or its certified copy, and the police station register showing the notice was in fact displayed, not merely ordered to be displayed. A prosecution or trial court relying on section 356 without a clean paper trail on all four points is relying on a provision that section 356(2) itself makes conditional. Tracking whether a matter has actually reached this stage is easiest through the case status tools covered in [checking case status on eCourts and the NJDG](/blog/check-case-status-ecourts-njdg), and any order applying section 356 is worth reading in full rather than trusting a headnote, using the approach set out in [how to read a judgment](/blog/how-to-read-a-judgment).

## The ninety day wait and the written reasons requirement

The proviso to section 356(1) fixes an outer floor, not a ceiling: "the Court shall not commence the trial unless a period of ninety days has lapsed from the date of framing of the charge." The clock starts at charge framing, not at the date of the proclamation or the date the FIR was registered. That distinction is easy to miss when reading a case file quickly, because a proclamation under section 84 can be issued well before charges are framed, and the ninety day figure has nothing to do with how long the accused has been absconding.

The statute does not, on its own text, say what happens if a court commences the trial one day short of ninety, or if it starts the trial exactly at the ninety day mark without the four section 356(2) steps yet being verified. Nothing in the bare act supplies an automatic remedy for premature commencement beyond whatever a defence advocate can raise on appeal or in a quashing petition, and no reported Supreme Court judgment interpreting this specific proviso exists as of this writing. It is a different ninety days from the chargesheet clock in [section 187(3) BNSS, the default bail provision](/blog/default-bail-bnss-section-187), and the two should not be confused merely because both run for the same length.

Section 356(1) also requires the court to record reasons in writing before proceeding, "in the interest of justice." That phrase gives a trial judge some latitude, but it also creates a paper trail an appellate or writ court can examine later. An order that does not independently engage with why proceeding in absentia serves the interest of justice, beyond reciting that the checklist and the wait were satisfied, is a weaker order than one that does. There is no textual reason section 356(1) should be read more loosely than the "reasons in writing" standard courts already apply to bail and remand orders.

## Counsel at state expense: section 356(3)

Section 356(3) is one sentence: "Where the proclaimed offender is not represented by any advocate, he shall be provided with an advocate for his defence at the expense of the State." This is the provision's central safeguard against turning a section 356 trial into an uncontested proceeding. Without it, a trial in absentia would mean a prosecution case running unopposed to a verdict, because the accused, by definition, is not present to instruct counsel.

The sub-section does not specify how the advocate is selected, what fee scale applies, or how the advocate is expected to take instructions from a client who cannot be reached. Those gaps are filled, in practice, by the ordinary legal aid machinery each state runs under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, none of which section 356(3) itself specifies. The actual quality of representation depends heavily on which state, district, and legal aid panel the case falls into, a variance the bare statutory text does nothing to standardise.

There is also a structural limit worth naming plainly. State funded counsel can cross-examine prosecution witnesses, argue on the framing of charge, and press for acquittal on the evidence as it stands. What that counsel cannot do is take instructions from the client on facts only the client knows: an alibi witness the accused could have named, a document only in the accused's possession, an explanation for conduct the prosecution has characterised as flight. That gap is inherent to representing an absent client and is not something a differently drafted sub-section could fully close. Given how little time the appointed advocate has to build a defence from a cold file, a research tool that surfaces the verified text of sections 84 and 356 alongside every reported order construing them, rather than a paraphrase, matters more here than in an ordinary contested trial; [Niyam's statute and case law search](https://niyam.ai) is built for exactly that kind of compressed-timeline lookup.

## The judgment, and what happens if the accused later appears

Section 356(6) settles a scenario the drafting elsewhere leaves ambiguous: what happens if the accused turns up, or is arrested, after the trial has started under sub-section (1) but before judgment. The sub-section is explicit that voluntary absence after commencement does not prevent the trial from continuing, including pronouncement of judgment, "even if he is arrested and produced or appears at the conclusion of such trial." Read against sub-section (1), this means the trigger point for whether a trial proceeds in absentia is the state of affairs when the court decides to invoke sub-section (1), not a continuing condition that has to persist until judgment. Once the trial has validly commenced under section 356, a later arrest does not automatically entitle the accused to a fresh trial with full participation; the trial that was already running continues to its conclusion.

Sub-section (4) deals with the evidentiary record. Depositions of prosecution witnesses recorded in the accused's absence, including depositions taken under the ordinary evidence-in-absence power at an earlier stage of the case, are admissible against the proclaimed offender at the trial or inquiry into the offence charged. Whether those depositions meet the ordinary admissibility standard the [Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 has carried over from the Evidence Act](/blog/bsa-evidence-act-section-mapping) is a separate question section 356 does not itself answer. Sub-section (5) layers a safeguard onto that record: depositions in a section 356 proceeding should, as far as practicable, be recorded by audio-video electronic means, preferably a mobile phone, so a later reviewing court, or the accused if he eventually appears, has more than a written transcription to assess what a witness actually said.

None of these sub-sections address the sentence if the accused is convicted in absentia and later surrenders. The statute provides no re-sentencing hearing distinct from the ordinary appeal route discussed next, and once judgment is pronounced, obtaining the [certified copy of the judgment](/blog/certified-copy-of-judgment) is the first practical step toward that appeal, since section 356(7) makes the appeal itself conditional on presentation.

## The appeal bar in section 356(7)

Section 356(7) reads: "No appeal shall lie against the judgment under this section unless the proclaimed offender presents himself before the Court of appeal." A person convicted in absentia under section 356 cannot file an appeal, through counsel, while remaining absent. The statute conditions the very right of appeal on physical presentation before the appellate court, and adds a further limit: an appeal against a conviction under this section faces a fixed outer time limit of three years, though the bare text of sub-section (7) attaches that limit to the presentation requirement rather than running independently of it.

This is the sharpest departure from ordinary criminal appeal procedure anywhere in the BNSS. In every other context, a convicted person's right to appeal does not depend on physical presence before the appellate court. Section 356(7) makes presence a jurisdictional precondition to the appeal existing at all. A person convicted under section 356 has two options: surrender or be arrested and then appeal, whether that runs through an ordinary criminal appeal, a [writ petition](/blog/how-to-file-writ-petition) invoking one of the [five constitutional writs](/blog/five-writs-explained), or, once an appeal is heard and lost, a further [review petition before the Supreme Court](/blog/review-petition-supreme-court-guide); or remain absent and have no avenue to challenge the conviction at all. There is no reported mechanism for challenging a section 356 conviction on a pure question of law, such as non-compliance with section 356(2), without first presenting in person, which pushes any such challenge toward the inherent powers of the High Court instead. Whether that inherent-power route is genuinely available against a fixed statutory appeal bar is a question this piece does not resolve; the general inherent-powers provision is covered in this blog's explainer on [section 528 BNSS](/blog/bnss-section-528-inherent-powers), successor to the old section 482 CrPC.

## CrPC compared: why this is genuinely new law

| Feature | CrPC, 1973 | BNSS, 2023, section 356 |
|---|---|---|
| Full trial concluding in a verdict, in the continued absence of the accused | not specified in the Act | ✓ (section 356(1), subject to preconditions) |
| Recording prosecution evidence in the accused's absence | ✓ (section 299, evidence preserved for later use if the accused is later arrested) | ✓ (section 356(4), evidence usable directly at the absentia trial itself) |
| Pronouncing a final judgment of conviction while the accused remains absent | ✗ | ✓ (section 356(1) and (6)) |
| Fixed pre-trial wait after charge framing before absentia trial can begin | not specified in the Act | ✓ (ninety days, proviso to section 356(1)) |
| Mandatory state-funded counsel specifically for the absentia trial | not specified in the Act | ✓ (section 356(3)) |
| Appeal conditioned on the convict's physical presentation before the appellate court | ✗ | ✓ (section 356(7)) |
| Audio-video recording of witness depositions preferred by statute | not specified in the Act | ✓ (section 356(5)) |

Section 299 of the CrPC, 1973, titled "Record of evidence in absence of accused" and read from [the bare act on Indian Kanoon](https://indiankanoon.org/doc/831107/), let a court examine prosecution witnesses and record their depositions in the accused's absence. Section 299(2) then allowed those depositions to be given in evidence against the person if subsequently accused of the offence, most commonly once finally arrested and stood trial in person. What section 299 never did, on its own text, is authorise a court to run the trial through to a verdict and pronounce a judgment of conviction while the accused remained absent throughout. It was an evidence-preservation tool, built for a case eventually tried with the accused present, not a mechanism for concluding one without the accused ever appearing.

That is the gap section 356 closes, and it is not a minor procedural tweak. A trial that can run from charge to conviction to sentence without the accused ever setting foot in the courtroom, cross-examining a witness in person, or instructing counsel directly, is a different kind of proceeding from anything the CrPC authorised for an ordinary criminal trial. It sits closer, in its structure if not its consequences, to the civil law systems of continental Europe that have long permitted trial in absentia, than to the common law tradition India's criminal procedure otherwise follows. An accused who fears exactly this outcome has an earlier, very different tool available, [anticipatory bail under BNSS section 482](/blog/anticipatory-bail-bnss-section-482), and the gap between an accused who applies for anticipatory bail and one who absconds instead is precisely what separates an ordinary trial from a section 356 proceeding.

## The proclamation to absentia trial sequence

```mermaid
flowchart TD
    A[Warrant issued, accused absconds] --> B[Proclamation under section 84 published]
    B --> C{Offence 10+ years, life, or death, or state notification under 356 8?}
    C -- No --> D[Section 356 does not apply]
    C -- Yes --> E[Court declares proclaimed offender, section 84 4]
    E --> F[Two arrest warrants 30 days apart, section 356 2]
    F --> G[Newspaper, relative, and residence notice, section 356 2]
    G --> H[Charge framed]
    H --> I[Ninety day wait, proviso to section 356 1]
    I --> J[Court records reasons in writing]
    J --> K[Trial proceeds in absentia, state-funded counsel if unrepresented]
    K --> L[Judgment pronounced]
    L --> M{Convict presents before appellate court?}
    M -- Yes --> N[Appeal maintainable, within three years]
    M -- No --> O[No appeal lies, section 356 7]
```

## The constitutional objection: Article 21 and the right to be present

The core constitutional objection to section 356 is straightforward to state and genuinely unresolved in application. Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law, and the Supreme Court held in *Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India*, 1978 AIR 597, decided on 25 January 1978 by a seven-judge bench and reported on [Indian Kanoon](https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1766147/), that the procedure in question must itself be fair, just, and reasonable, "not fanciful, oppressive or arbitrary." A criminal trial ending in conviction and a custodial sentence is the paradigm case of a deprivation of liberty Article 21 was written to constrain. The question section 356 puts to a reviewing court is whether a trial the accused never attended, where he could not instruct counsel or cross-examine an accuser face to face, meets that standard, even after the section 356(2) safeguards and the ninety day wait have been satisfied.

The Supreme Court's broader Article 21 jurisprudence on criminal procedure has repeatedly treated presence, participation, and speed as connected values rather than separate boxes to tick. In *Hussainara Khatoon v. Home Secretary, State of Bihar*, 1979 AIR 1360, decided on 12 February 1979 and reported on [Indian Kanoon](https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1007347/), the court read Article 21 as requiring the procedure by which a person's liberty is affected to be reasonable, fair, and just, in the specific context of undertrials kept in custody through prolonged, unexplained delay, the same case law lineage that eventually produced the [bail is the rule, jail is the exception](/blog/bail-rule-jail-exception-article-21) principle. Section 356 inverts the usual fact pattern that line of cases addresses: instead of a state failing to bring a present, willing accused to trial quickly enough, it deals with an accused who has made himself unavailable, and asks whether the state may proceed without him rather than wait indefinitely. Both fact patterns test the same underlying constitutional question, whether the deprivation of liberty survives scrutiny as fair, just, and reasonable, but they pull in different directions on what fairness to the accused actually requires. Whether pre-2024 Article 21 precedent like *Maneka Gandhi* and *Hussainara Khatoon* carries forward unchanged into a BNSS-era dispute is itself addressed in [do IPC precedents apply under the BNS](/blog/do-ipc-precedents-apply-under-bns), which covers the equivalent transition question for constitutional rather than statutory holdings.

There are two honest positions, and neither can be dismissed as fringe. One holds that a proclaimed offender who has been served, so far as the state can manage, with two warrants, a newspaper notice, and a posted notice at his own residence, and who has still not appeared ninety days after charge, has himself waived participation through deliberate absence, and that section 356(1)'s own language, "shall be deemed to operate as a waiver," reflects a legitimate legislative judgment that the state cannot be held hostage indefinitely by an accused's choice to abscond. On this view, state-funded counsel under section 356(3) supplies the minimum adversarial safeguard Article 21 requires once genuine participation has become impossible through no fault of the state.

The competing position holds that a deemed waiver of a fundamental procedural right cannot be manufactured by a legal fiction attached to an accused's absence, when that absence may itself be involuntary or the product of defective service rather than deliberate evasion. Publication in a newspaper the accused may never see, and a notice affixed to a residence he may have left years earlier, are proxies for actual notice, not actual notice itself, and a conviction resting on that chain, followed by an appeal bar that requires the very presence the trial proceeded without, compounds rather than cures the fairness gap. On this reading, section 356 does not merely regulate procedure around an established right, it extinguishes the substance of the right to participate in one's own trial for as long as the accused stays away, a more serious question than anything the CrPC's evidence-preservation power under section 299 ever raised.

No reported Supreme Court judgment has yet tested section 356 against Article 21 directly, and this piece does not resolve which reading will prevail. What can be said accurately is that the *Rahul Kumar Prasad Verma* order from the Jharkhand High Court shows trial courts are already applying section 356 in live POCSO and other serious cases, that compliance disputes are reaching the High Courts within two years of the provision's commencement on 1 July 2024, and that a constitutional challenge squarely testing sub-sections (1) and (7) against Article 21 has not, as of this writing, produced a reported final ruling.

## Where the law is still unsettled

Three specific points remain open, and an advocate handling a section 356 matter should treat each as live rather than settled.

First, the consequence of non-compliance with section 356(2). The bare text does not say what happens if the trial court proceeds under sub-section (1) despite a gap in the four-step checklist, whether that produces an automatically void trial, a voidable one open to challenge, or merely an irregularity a reviewing court may excuse if no prejudice is shown. The Jharkhand High Court's order in *Rahul Kumar Prasad Verma* stopped at directing a report from the trial court; it did not reach or decide the consequence question.

Second, whether the ten year punishment threshold in section 84(4) is a hard jurisdictional limit, or whether the section 356(8) notification power lets a state effectively erase that threshold for any absconder covered by section 84(1). A broad notification would make trial in absentia available for offences well below the band the drafters used to define a proclaimed offender in the first place, and whether that is what Parliament intended is not addressed anywhere in the text of either section.

Third, the relationship between section 356(7)'s appeal bar and a High Court's inherent powers. If a convict genuinely cannot present himself, through illness or an obstruction beyond his control, section 356(7) on its face offers no relief, and whether inherent powers can bypass a specific statutory precondition Parliament wrote into the appeal provision itself is an open structural question, not something either section resolves internally.

Any advocate relying on secondary commentary that states these questions as settled, in either direction, should ask for the specific reported judgment before citing the point in a petition. As of this writing, none exists.

---

Reading section 356 accurately requires cross-checking a chain of provisions, section 84 for the proclamation, section 84(4) for the punishment threshold, and section 356(2) for the four preconditions, against each other and against the facts of a case, rather than relying on a single paraphrased summary of what "trial in absentia" means under the new code. A verified statute lookup that returns the actual sub-section text alongside every reported order applying it, rather than a generic search result, is the difference between citing section 356(2) accurately and citing a paraphrase that dropped the ninety day proviso or the punishment threshold. [Niyam's legal research tools](https://niyam.ai) are built to surface that verified text and the case law together, which matters most where the reported case law is still thin and every new order changes what "settled" means. Practitioners can also confirm the current, in-force text of any BNSS provision discussed here against the government's own repository on [India Code](https://www.indiacode.nic.in) before relying on it in a filing.

## Frequently asked questions

### What is BNSS section 356?

Section 356 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 lets a criminal court try, convict, and sentence a proclaimed offender who has absconded and cannot be arrested, without the accused being present. It applies only after a proclamation under section 84, specific publication and notice steps, and a ninety day wait from charge framing, and it requires state-funded counsel for an unrepresented accused.

### Did the CrPC have a provision like section 356?

No. Section 299 of the CrPC, 1973 let a court record prosecution evidence in the accused's absence, but that evidence was preserved for use once the accused was later arrested and stood trial in person. Section 299 did not authorise a court to conclude a trial and pronounce a final judgment of conviction while the accused remained absent throughout.

### Who counts as a proclaimed offender under the BNSS?

Section 84(4) BNSS lets a court declare a person a proclaimed offender only where the underlying offence is punishable with imprisonment of ten years or more, imprisonment for life, or death, and a proclamation under section 84(1) has already been issued and published. A person proclaimed under section 84(1) for a lesser offence is not automatically a proclaimed offender unless a state notification under section 356(8) extends the provision to that case.

### What must happen before a court can try a proclaimed offender in absentia?

Section 356(2) requires four things: two consecutive arrest warrants issued at least thirty days apart, newspaper publication at the accused's last known address warning that trial will proceed in his absence, notice to a relative or friend where one exists, and notice affixed at the accused's residence and displayed at the relevant police station. The trial also cannot begin until ninety days have passed from charge framing.

### Why does the trial have to wait ninety days after the charge is framed?

The proviso to section 356(1) fixes that wait as a floor, giving the accused a further window to appear before the court proceeds without him, on top of the notice steps in section 356(2). The statute does not state what happens if a court starts the trial before the ninety days elapse; that gap has not been resolved by a reported judgment.

### Does the accused get a lawyer during a section 356 trial?

Yes. Section 356(3) requires the court to provide an unrepresented proclaimed offender with an advocate at the expense of the state. That advocate can cross-examine prosecution witnesses and argue the case on the evidence, but cannot take instructions from a client who cannot be reached, which is an inherent limit on any absentia defence.

### Can the accused appeal a conviction under section 356?

Only after presenting himself before the appellate court. Section 356(7) bars an appeal against a section 356 judgment unless the proclaimed offender first presents in person, and fixes an outer three-year limit on that appeal. A convict who remains absent has no route to challenge the conviction through the ordinary appellate process.

### What happens if the accused is arrested after the trial has already started?

Section 356(6) allows the trial to continue to judgment even if the accused is arrested, produced, or appears before the trial concludes. A later arrest does not automatically entitle the accused to restart the trial with full participation once it has validly commenced under section 356(1).

### Is section 356 constitutional under Article 21?

That has not been settled by a reported Supreme Court judgment as of this writing. The Supreme Court has held, in cases including *Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India*, that any procedure depriving a person of liberty under Article 21 must be fair, just, and reasonable. Whether a trial the accused never attended meets that standard, once the section 356(2) safeguards and the ninety day wait are satisfied, is a genuinely open constitutional question.

### Can a High Court quash a conviction under section 356 without the accused presenting in person?

Section 356(7) itself does not provide that route, since it conditions the right of appeal on physical presentation. Whether the inherent powers of the High Court can be used instead to challenge a defective section 356 conviction without presentation is an unresolved structural question that has not been decided in a reported judgment.

### What evidence can be used against a proclaimed offender tried under section 356?

Section 356(4) allows depositions of prosecution witnesses recorded in the accused's absence, including depositions taken at an earlier stage of the case, to be given in evidence at the section 356 trial itself. Section 356(5) directs that such depositions should, as far as practicable, be recorded by audio-video electronic means.

### Has any court ruled on non-compliance with section 356(2)?

The Jharkhand High Court, in *Rahul Kumar Prasad Verma v. State of Jharkhand*, addressed an allegation that charges were framed without complying with section 356(2) and directed the trial court to explain the circumstances, but adjourned the matter without deciding what consequence follows from non-compliance. The point remains open.

### Does state-funded counsel under section 356(3) satisfy the fair trial requirement on its own?

Not necessarily, and this is contested. State-funded counsel can contest the prosecution's evidence, but cannot supply information only the absent accused holds, such as an alibi or a document in the accused's possession. Whether that structural gap is consistent with the fair, just, and reasonable standard the Supreme Court has read into Article 21 is part of the unresolved constitutional debate around the provision.

### Where does section 356 sit within the BNSS?

Section 356 is one of the trial provisions in the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, and operates alongside the proclamation and attachment mechanism in sections 84 and 85. It has no equivalent numbering or direct predecessor in the CrPC, 1973, which had no provision authorising a full trial to conclude in a verdict while the accused remained continuously absent.