Failure to forthwith report a bank-account seizure to the Magistrate vitiates the freeze.

In brief

The question

Whether the petitioner was entitled to have the Magistrate’s order refusing to defreeze his Tamil Nadu Grama Bank account reversed.

The court held

The Court allowed the criminal revision and reversed the Magistrate’s refusal to defreeze the petitioner’s Tamil Nadu Grama Bank account.

It also directed

It consequently allowed Crl. M.P. No. 465 of 2025 in toto.

01Facts

A criminal case was registered against the petitioner, arrayed as A9, for offences under Sections 395, 457, 458, 414 and 120(B) IPC.

¶ 05–08 · pp. 2–3

Police froze two of his bank accounts. On his application to defreeze them, the Judicial Magistrate directed the release of his Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank account but declined to release his Tamil Nadu Grama Bank account.

¶ 05–08 · pp. 2–3

The petitioner challenged the refusal concerning the Grama Bank account, contending that the police had not reported the seizure to the jurisdictional Magistrate as required by law.

¶ 05–08 · pp. 2–3

The Additional Public Prosecutor conceded that the failure to report the seizure forthwith was fatal to the State’s position.

¶ 09 · p. 4

02Issues

i.Whether the petitioner was entitled to have the Magistrate’s order refusing to defreeze his Tamil Nadu Grama Bank account reversed.

¶ 10 · p. 4

ii.Whether the police’s failure to report the freezing of the bank account forthwith to the jurisdictional Magistrate vitiated the seizure.

¶ 13–16 · pp. 6–7

03Law Applied

Section 106(1) and (3) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS), corresponding to Section 102 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC), permits police to seize property suspected of being connected with an offence but requires the seizure to be reported forthwith to the jurisdictional Magistrate.

p. 5

In State of Maharashtra v. Tapas D. Neogy, (1999) 7 SCC 685, the Supreme Court held that a bank account is “property” within Section 102 CrPC and may be seized or its operation prohibited where it has a direct link to the offence under investigation.

¶ 12 · p. 6

Relying on Praveen Kumar v. State, Crl. O.P. No. 4645 of 2021 (18 March 2021), and the authorities cited there, the Court stated that non-compliance with the reporting requirement vitiates the freezing of a bank account.

¶ 15 · p. 7

Provisions in the judgment · 3 · Linked ones open on LawLens

Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 Section 102 Section 503 Section 504

04Reasoning

The petitioner’s bank accounts had been frozen, but the police had not reported the seizure to the jurisdictional Magistrate; the Magistrate’s order itself recorded that omission.

¶ 13 · p. 6

Since a bank account is property subject to seizure under Section 106 BNSS, the police were required to comply with the statutory obligation to report the seizure forthwith. Applying the cited authorities, the Court held that the failure to do so vitiated the freezing of the accounts. The State’s concession supported that conclusion.

¶ 09, 12–16 · pp. 4, 6–7