BNSS Section 113: Letter of Request From Outside India for an Investigation in India (CrPC 166B Mapping) (2026)

Explainer · Criminal Procedure · BNSS

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

Section 113 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), in force since 1 July 2024, handles a letter of request that comes into India from a court or authority in another country. It lets that request be routed so that a person here can be examined or evidence collected for a foreign investigation. It replaced Section 166B of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). This is not, as some lists suggest, a section about security for good behaviour from habitual offenders. This explainer sets out what Section 113 does, how the request is handled, and how it maps to the old law. Last verified October 2026.

01Clearing up the section number

Some section lists wrongly tag BNSS Section 113 as "security for good behaviour from habitual offenders". That is the old Section 110 CrPC, which in the BNSS is now Section 129, not Section 113. The error comes from carrying old numbers across, which the BNSS renumbering does not allow.

Section 113 of the BNSS actually deals with an incoming letter of request: a court or authority outside India asking India for help in a criminal investigation. It maps to the old Section 166B of the CrPC and sits in the chapter on reciprocal arrangements and attachment of property.

02What Section 113 covers

Section 113 is the inbound counterpart of the outgoing letter of request. It applies when a court or an authority in a country or place outside India wants to examine a person, or obtain a document or thing, for an offence under investigation there, and that person or material is in India.

The request comes to the Central Government. The Central Government may, if it thinks fit, act on it by one of two routes, so the provision gives the government a gatekeeping role rather than making the request automatic.

03How an incoming request is handled

Once the Central Government decides to act on the request, it can take one of two routes:

• Through a Magistrate: forward the letter of request to a Chief Judicial Magistrate or a Judicial Magistrate, who then summons the person, records a statement, or has the document or thing produced.
• Through the police: send the letter to a police officer, who investigates the offence as if it had been committed in India, and then returns the result through the Central Government.

This lets India give lawful help to a foreign investigation through recognised channels, while keeping the process under the control of the government and the courts here.

04Old to new: CrPC 166B to BNSS 113

Section 166B of the CrPC is now Section 113 of the BNSS. The structure of the reciprocal-assistance chapter is carried over, with the inbound and outbound requests kept as separate sections.

The definitions that control the whole chapter, including "contracting State" and "proceeds of crime", are set out in Section 111 of the BNSS.

05Is it an offence? Classification

Section 113 does not create an offence, so there is no cognizable, bailable or triable label to apply to the section itself, and it carries no punishment.

It is a procedural route for international cooperation. Whether an examination or search that follows is cognizable or not depends on the underlying foreign offence and the Indian provisions used to act on the request.

06What changed from the old law

For the incoming letter of request, the substance follows Section 166B of the CrPC, so earlier practice on handling foreign requests still guides how Section 113 is read. The main change is the renumbering and the cleaner grouping of the reciprocal-assistance chapter.

Read Section 113 together with the chapter definitions in Section 111 of the BNSS, and with the outgoing request in Section 112.

07Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

A letter of request turns up in the big economic, cyber and organised-crime matters that stay in the Indian courts for years. Claw lets you trace that litigation across 9,102 courts, benches and forums and a store of more than 30 crore judgments, by provision or by party or advocate, returning each result in under five seconds. So you can see how a court has treated an incoming request, or evidence gathered through one, or keep watch on a live matter.

Claw does not use customer case documents to train its AI models, so your material in a cross-border matter is never used that way. Create a free Claw account to search and follow these cases, and for the wider body of law, see case search across Indian courts.

08Sources and further reading

• India Code (official text of the BNSS, 2023): indiacode.nic.in
• Section 113, BNSS (bare text): advocatekhoj.com
• Section 166B, CrPC (old provision): devgan.in
• Claw: clawlaw.in

This explainer is general information, not legal advice. The law changes through amendments and judgments, so check the current text and take advice from counsel before you act.

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