Madras HC Converts 13 Accuseds’ Bail-Cancellation Challenges Into Petitions For Consideration By Appropriate Bench

The petitioners filed criminal revisions under Section 438 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS), challenging the Principal District and Sessions Judge, Thanjavur’s order dated 1 August 2026 cancelling their earlier bail in Crl.M.P. No.4214 of 2026.

At the final hearing, the Additional Public Prosecutor objected that the revisions were barred because the impugned order was interlocutory. Petitioners’ counsel conceded that the revisions were not maintainable and requested that they be converted into criminal original petitions under Section 528 BNSS.

Section 438(2) BNSS bars criminal revision against interlocutory orders; the Court treated the challenged bail-cancellation order as interlocutory for this purpose.

Section 528 BNSS provides the basis invoked for the converted criminal original petitions.

Relying on Akanksha Arora v. Tanay Maben, 2024 INSC 962, the Court noted that the nomenclature of a petition is not decisive and that conversion between procedural forms may be permitted to do substantive justice.

The Court accepted the State’s objection that the challenged order was interlocutory and that the revisions were therefore barred under Section 438(2) BNSS.

The petitioners conceded non-maintainability but sought conversion rather than dismissal. Applying the principle in Akanksha Arora that procedural nomenclature is immaterial when conversion serves substantive justice, the Court converted the revisions into criminal original petitions under Section 528 BNSS. It did not determine the merits of the bail-cancellation order.

It directed the Registry to assign new case numbers and place the petitions before the appropriate Bench.