A criminal court may send a summons to an email address or a messaging app. Whether that electronic service of summons is good under Section 64 of the BNSS turns on the seal image the summons carries and on the rules the State has made.
Those State rules govern a mode that has been tested twice since 2025. The Supreme Court held in 2025 that electronic communication is not a valid mode of service for a notice under Section 35, the notice an investigating officer issues to a person during an investigation. The Bombay High Court held in 2026 that electronic service of a court summons is lawful, and set aside a costs order imposed on a constable who had served one by phone. The two rulings are widely read as contradictory, and they are not, because a Section 35 notice and a Section 64 summons are different instruments.
The Bombay ruling turned on what service is for, which is the ground both provisions share. Service exists to put a person on notice that a proceeding concerns them, and to let a court act on their absence once that notice is proved. Four provisions carry that job in the Sanhita: Section 63 on the form, Section 64 on who serves and how, Section 70 on the proof, and Section 71 on a witness.
What neither ruling settles is the condition that the proviso to Section 64(2) attaches. Electronic service is permitted there in “such form and in such manner, as the State Government may, by rules, provide”, and only a handful of States and Union territories have made those rules. A mode the Sanhita permits across India is therefore not available on the same terms everywhere, and in most States it has no prescribed manner at all.
Whether a summons that arrived on a phone was validly served is answered by taking the seal image first and the State’s rules second. A magistrate’s court trying a summons case sends the summons to the accused’s WhatsApp number, taken from the register the police station maintains under the proviso to Section 64(1). The accused does not appear on the date fixed, and the prosecutor asks the court to proceed.
Two facts decide whether that service stands. The first is what was sent, because the proviso to Section 64(2) applies to a summons bearing the image of the court’s seal, and a typed message giving a date is outside it. The second is where the court sits, since the manner of electronic service is whatever the State Government has prescribed by rules.
Two questions therefore sit on the record, and each needs its own answer. The first is whether the mode was authorised in that State at all, which is a question about delegated legislation rather than about the accused. The second is whether the attested copy required by Section 70(3) is on the file, because without it there is nothing to prove the service from. On these facts, with a sealed summons, notified State rules and an attested copy, the service is good and the court may act on the absence.
The power the BNSS creates to serve summons electronically
The power to serve a summons by electronic means comes from two provisions read together, Section 63(ii) and the proviso to Section 64(2) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. Section 63 gives every summons issued by a court two alternative forms. The first is the familiar one: in writing, in duplicate, signed by the presiding officer, bearing the seal of the court. The second is “in an encrypted or any other form of electronic communication”, which “shall bear the image of the seal of the Court or digital signature”.
Section 64 then deals with service rather than form. Sub-section (1) puts service in the hands of a police officer or, subject to State rules, an officer of the court issuing it or another public servant. Its proviso is new to Indian criminal procedure, and it requires the police station or the registrar in the court to “maintain a register to enter the address, email address, phone number and such other details as the State Government may, by rules, provide”.
Sub-section (2) keeps personal service as the primary mode. A summons is to be served personally “if practicable”, by delivering or tendering one of the duplicates to the person summoned. The electronic limb sits in the proviso to that sub-section and is permissive: a “summons bearing the image of Court’s seal may also be served by electronic communication in such form and in such manner, as the State Government may, by rules, provide”.
None of this existed under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. Old Section 62, the parent of Section 64, carried neither proviso, so there was no register of email addresses and no electronic mode to fall back on. Courts asked to bless service by messaging app before 2024 were working without an enabling provision, which is why an earlier analysis on this blog treated summons via WhatsApp as an irregularity rather than a mode. The Sanhita supplies what the old Code lacked.
A messaging app comes inside the provision through the definition rather than by name. Section 2(1)(i) defines electronic communication as information transmitted “by means of an electronic device including a telephone, mobile phone, or other wireless telecommunication device, or a computer”, which covers a message sent from a court system to a handset. Nothing in Section 64 names WhatsApp or email, and nothing in it needs to. Service of process is one step in a longer sequence, and where it sits is set out in the guide to the stages of a criminal trial under the BNSS.
Section 64 does not work alone, and an objection to electronic service is rarely an objection to Section 64 by itself. Section 63 supplies the form a summons may take, and Section 64(1) supplies the server and the register the address is drawn from. The proviso to Section 64(2) supplies the manner, Section 70(3) supplies the proof and the deeming that goes with it, and Section 71 supplies the simultaneous copy that a witness receives. A gap at any point in that chain is enough to put the service in question, and the gap is as often in the register entry as in the law.
Conditions on electronic service of summons under Section 64
Electronic service of summons under Section 64 carries two conditions, and both have to be met before the mode is available at all. The first condition is about the document. The proviso to Section 64(2) applies only to a “summons bearing the image of Court’s seal”, and Section 63(ii) allows a digital signature in place of that image. The second condition is about the State, because the same proviso permits service only “in such form and in such manner, as the State Government may, by rules, provide”.
Those two conditions fail in different ways, and a defence reading the record checks them separately. A defect in the first is visible on the face of the summons, so the question is what was sent and what it carried. A defect in the second cannot be seen on the summons at all, because it depends on whether a notification exists in that State. The order matters as well, since a properly sealed summons sent in a State with no rules has no prescribed manner to comply with.
The seal image and digital signature on an electronic summons
The seal image is what brings a document inside the electronic proviso. Section 63(ii) requires an electronic summons to be in “an encrypted or any other form of electronic communication” and to “bear the image of the seal of the Court or digital signature”. Either mark satisfies the section, and the proviso to Section 64(2) then speaks of a “summons bearing the image of Court’s seal”. A scanned page with no seal, or a message from a constable’s phone giving a hearing date, sits outside both.
The Delhi rules show what compliance looks like in practice. Under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (Service of Summons and Warrants) Rules, 2025, the summons is generated through the Case Information System, encrypted, and carries the digital seal of the court together with the presiding officer’s electronic signature. The document is then routed to an Electronic Summons Delivery Centre at the police station for transmission and for recording the acknowledgement. The mark travels with the document rather than being asserted by whoever sends it.
The practical consequence is a question about what was actually transmitted. A summons sealed in the court’s system but forwarded as a photograph of a screen is a different document from the one the rules describe. Where the record does not show which of the two went out, the first condition is unproved rather than satisfied.
State rules on electronic service of summons under Section 64(2)
State rules set the manner of electronic service of summons, so whether the mode is available changes with the State. The proviso conditions both the form and the manner on rules the State Government may make, and a permissive power of that kind produces nothing until it is exercised. Three jurisdictions have exercised it so far.
Ladakh made its Service of Summons Rules, 2025 expressly under the provisos to Section 64(1) and Section 64(2), with effect from February 2025. Those rules keep personal service by a police officer as the default and then permit a summons bearing the image of the court’s seal to be served through electronic communication, naming a personal messaging app and email. Delhi moved in the same month and replaced its first instrument in August 2025 with the Service of Summons and Warrants Rules, 2025, which extend the scheme to warrants. Tamil Nadu followed in July 2025 through the Tamil Nadu Criminal Procedure Rules, 2025, providing for e-summons by WhatsApp, SMS and email.
The instruments do not all say the same thing, which is the reason the State matters. Delhi’s first set of rules, notified in February 2025 and since replaced, treated electronic service as due service only where the summons in the ordinary mode remained unserved or the person resided outside Delhi, while the Ladakh rules attach no such precondition. A practitioner therefore reads the rules of the State where the court sits rather than a reported holding from another, because on the Delhi model a first-attempt email would not have counted and on the Ladakh model it would.
Proof of electronic service of summons on the court record
The proof of electronic service of summons is an attested copy of the summons kept on the court’s file. Section 70(3) provides that all summons served through electronic communication under Sections 64 to 71 “shall be considered as duly served and a copy of such summons shall be attested and kept as a proof of service of summons”. The deeming and the attestation arrive in the same sentence, and a record without the attested copy has met only half of it.
That requirement matters because electronic service dispenses with the receipt that personal service produces. Section 64(3) lets a serving officer require the person summoned to sign a receipt on the back of the other duplicate, and there is no equivalent for a message sent to a handset. The attested copy takes the place of that signature as the document a court can look at.
Deemed service of summons under Section 70(3)
Deemed service under Section 70(3) removes the need to prove that the person read the summons. The sub-section treats electronic service under Sections 64 to 71 as due service, so a court may act on the absence of someone who never opened the message. That is a shift from the position under personal service, where a signed receipt or a serving officer’s endorsement ties the document to the individual.
The deeming has limits, and they concern the address rather than the reading. Section 70(3) says nothing about whether the email address or the number used was the right one, and the register kept under the proviso to Section 64(1) is where that detail is supposed to sit. Delivery to a device establishes the fact of transmission, not that the transmission reached the person the court intended to summon.
Section 530 supports the same reading from a different direction. It provides that all trials, inquiries and proceedings under the Sanhita, including the issuance, service and execution of summons and warrants, may be held in electronic mode by use of electronic communication or audio-video electronic means. The provision is general, and it puts electronic service among the ordinary ways of doing the work rather than among the exceptions.
The Bombay High Court relied on both provisions in 2026. Setting aside a costs order that a special court had imposed on a constable for contacting prosecution witnesses about hearing dates by phone, the Court held electronic service lawful under the Sanhita and observed that the purpose of service is to put the other party to notice. On that reasoning the mode of transmission is immaterial once the notice has reached the person it was meant for.
Summons to a witness under Section 71
A witness summons works differently, and the difference is simultaneity. Section 71(1) allows a court issuing a summons to a witness to direct a copy to be served by electronic communication or by registered post “in addition to and simultaneously with” the ordinary summons. The electronic copy supplements the ordinary one instead of replacing it, so a court that sends only the email has not used Section 71 at all. The address used is where the witness ordinarily resides, carries on business, or personally works for gain.
Section 71(2) sets out when a court may treat that service as complete. An acknowledgement purporting to be signed by the witness, a postal endorsement that the witness refused delivery, and proof of delivery under Section 70(3) each allow the court to deem the summons duly served. Electronic service of a witness summons is therefore routed back through the proof requirement in Section 70(3).
The provision that Section 71 replaced allowed considerably less. Section 69 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 permitted a witness summons to go by registered post and carried no electronic limb. Section 71 is also the provision the Supreme Court took as its point of contrast when it considered notices issued during an investigation.
Electronic service barred for notices under Section 35 of the BNSS
Electronic service is barred for a notice under Section 35, and that bar does not reach a summons issued by a court under Section 64. The Supreme Court decided the point in 2025 in Satender Kumar Antil v. Central Bureau of Investigation, dismissing an application that sought to modify its earlier direction. The holding is that electronic communication is not a valid mode of service of a notice under Section 35 of the Sanhita, or under Section 41A of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, which that section replaced.
The Court gave two reasons, and both distinguish rather than disapprove. The first is institutional: a summons issued by a court is a judicial act, whereas a notice issued by the investigating agency is an executive act.
The second reason is about consequence. A summons under Section 71 has no immediate bearing on the liberty of an individual if it is not complied with, while a notice under Section 35 can have exactly that effect, because non-compliance opens the way to arrest. A document capable of costing a person their liberty was held to need the stricter mode of service.
A third line of reasoning in the same judgment cuts in favour of Sections 64 and 71 rather than against them. Restrictions imposed by the legislature confining electronic communication to certain procedures, the Court reasoned, preclude its use for any other procedure. Parliament did provide for electronic communication in the summons provisions, so the reasoning that excludes Section 35 includes Section 64.
The reporting around the 2025 ruling is where the confusion starts. Headlines describing a ban on WhatsApp summons are about the notice an investigating officer issues before an arrest, which is a different instrument governed by a different provision, and the procedure for it sits alongside the rules on filing a police complaint under the BNSS. A reader who takes that ban at face value will reach the wrong answer on a summons in a summons case.
The Bombay High Court decided the opposite way on that question in February 2026, in State of Maharashtra v. Satish Sanjay Ramteke. One point in it remains open, because the Court reached its conclusion through Sections 70(3) and 530 without pointing to any Maharashtra rules made under the proviso to Section 64(2). Either those two provisions operate independently of the proviso, in which case electronic service is good everywhere, or the proviso still governs the manner and State rules remain the condition. Until a court resolves that, the safer course is to serve in a manner the State has actually prescribed.
Fallbacks where electronic service of summons fails
Where electronic service of summons fails, the serving officer returns to the ordinary modes in Sections 66 and 67 rather than treating the attempt as the end of the process. Personal service remains the primary mode under Section 64(2) itself, which calls for it “if practicable”. An electronic attempt does not displace that requirement, and a failed one leaves the ordinary sequence intact.
Section 66 covers the person who cannot be found. Where due diligence does not locate the person summoned, the summons may be served by leaving one of the duplicates with an adult member of the family residing with them, who signs a receipt on the back of the other duplicate if the serving officer requires it. The Explanation is narrow, and it provides that a servant is not a member of the family for this purpose.
Section 67 covers the case where none of that works. Where service cannot be effected under Section 64, Section 65 or Section 66 by the exercise of due diligence, the serving officer affixes one duplicate to a conspicuous part of the house or homestead in which the person summoned ordinarily resides. The court then makes such inquiries as it thinks fit and either declares the summons duly served or orders fresh service in the manner it considers proper.
Those fallbacks get used because electronic service fails in mundane ways rather than doctrinal ones. A wrong number in the register kept under the proviso to Section 64(1), a message delivered to a handset the person no longer uses, and a document sent without the seal image each produce a bad service for a different reason. The first two are failures of the address, which Section 70(3) does not cure, and the third is a failure of form, which puts the transmission outside the proviso altogether.
What survives a challenge is a record that shows each step. The file should carry the attested copy Section 70(3) requires, the register entry the address was taken from, and the court’s direction authorising the electronic mode where the State rules call for one. Only a non-appearance on a validly served summons supports a warrant under Section 72, and a proclamation under Section 84 follows later still, once a warrant cannot be executed because the person has absconded, which is the sequence the older treatment of proclamation under Section 82 CrPC describes.
Frequently asked questions
Can a court summons be served on WhatsApp in India?
A court summons can be served on WhatsApp where two conditions are met. The summons must bear the image of the court’s seal or a digital signature under Section 63(ii), and the State Government must have made rules under the proviso to Section 64(2) prescribing the form and manner of electronic service. Delhi, Ladakh and Tamil Nadu have notified such rules. In a State that has not, there is no prescribed manner for the mode to follow.
Did the Supreme Court ban WhatsApp summons in 2025?
The Supreme Court barred electronic service of a notice under Section 35 of the BNSS, which is the notice an investigating officer issues, and not a summons issued by a court. In Satender Kumar Antil v. Central Bureau of Investigation the Court drew the line expressly, holding that a summons issued by a court is a judicial act while a notice issued by the investigating agency is an executive act. It also noted that a summons under Section 71 has no immediate bearing on liberty, while non-compliance with a Section 35 notice can lead to arrest.
Is electronic service of summons valid where the State has not notified rules?
The position is unsettled and the safer answer is no. The proviso to Section 64(2) permits electronic service only in the form and manner the State Government provides by rules, so on its face the mode has no content until those rules exist. The Bombay High Court reached a contrary practical result in 2026 by relying on Section 70(3) and Section 530 without reference to State rules, which leaves the question open until a higher court settles it.
Does a delivered message prove that the person received the summons?
Delivery proves transmission, not receipt by the intended person. Section 70(3) deems electronic service duly served and requires an attested copy to be kept, but it says nothing about whether the number or email address used belonged to the person summoned. That detail is meant to come from the register the police station or the court registrar keeps under the proviso to Section 64(1), and a wrong entry there is the usual ground of challenge.
What must the court record show for electronic service of summons to stand?
The court record should carry the attested copy of the summons that Section 70(3) requires as proof of service. It should also carry the register entry from which the email address or number was taken, since that is what connects the transmission to the person summoned. Where the State rules call for a direction of the court authorising the electronic mode, that direction belongs on the file as well. On a witness summons under Section 71, the record should show in addition that the electronic copy went out simultaneously with the ordinary summons.
References
Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (Act 46 of 2023), sections cited: 2(1)(i), 35, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71, 72, 84 and 530
Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, sections cited: 41A, 62 and 69
Satender Kumar Antil v. Central Bureau of Investigation, 2025 INSC 909 (Supreme Court of India, 31 July 2025)
State of Maharashtra v. Satish Sanjay Ramteke, Criminal Application 222 of 2026, 2026 LiveLaw (Bom) 66 (High Court of Judicature at Bombay, Nagpur Bench, 12 February 2026)
Delhi BNSS (Service of Summons) Rules, 2025 (notified February 2025, since repealed)
Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (Service of Summons and Warrants) Rules, 2025, Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (notified August 2025)
Service of Summons Rules, 2025, Administration of the Union Territory of Ladakh (effective 15 February 2025)
Tamil Nadu Criminal Procedure Rules, 2025 (notified July 2025)
Disclaimer
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. The manner of electronic service of summons under Section 64 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 depends on rules made by the State Government concerned, and those rules differ between States and are still being notified. Readers should check the rules in force in the relevant State and consult a qualified advocate on the facts of a specific case.