Litigation Search by PAN or CIN in India: What Works (2026)

ClawScore · Litigation Risk

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

It is a reasonable wish: you have a PAN or a CIN, a unique number, so why not type it in and get every case against that person or company? The honest answer is that it does not work that way in India. Court case records are indexed by party name and case number, not by PAN or CIN, so there is no official portal where a PAN returns a litigation history. That does not make PAN and CIN useless. Used correctly, they are how you confirm you are searching the right person and reading the right results. This explainer sets out what each identifier does, and how to build a search around them. Last verified October 2026.

01The short answer

You cannot run a litigation search by PAN in India, and you cannot run a court case search by CIN either. Court portals such as eCourts, the High Court sites, the Supreme Court and the NCLT are searched by party name and case number. A PAN is a tax identifier that is not published in court case data, and a CIN is a company identifier used on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs record, not in the party-name index of the courts.

What works is a two-step method: use the PAN or CIN to confirm the exact identity of the person or company on the records that do carry those numbers, then run a careful name search in the courts, and use the identifier again to verify that each hit belongs to your subject.

02Why you cannot search courts by PAN

A PAN (Permanent Account Number) is issued by the Income Tax Department to identify a taxpayer. It is deliberately not a public search key:

• Courts do not record it in the public case index. A plaint or complaint is filed in a name, and the case-status systems let you search by that name, by case number or by advocate, not by PAN.
• It is sensitive personal data. There is no official service that takes a PAN and returns someone's litigation, and you should be wary of any that claims to.

So a PAN cannot start a court search. It can still help you pin down the exact legal name and confirm identity, which is where its value lies in this exercise.

03What a CIN actually does

A CIN (Corporate Identification Number) is more useful than a PAN for this, but still not a court search key:

• On the MCA at mca.gov.in, the CIN pulls the exact registered name, former names and directors, which is the material you need to search well.
• At the NCLT, company matters can often be found against the company, and the CIN helps you be sure of the entity.
• In the courts, the CIN is not indexed, so you still search by name. The CIN is how you confirm, afterwards, that a hit belongs to this company and not a namesake.

The deeper difference between an MCA record search and a litigation search is covered in the difference between an MCA search and a litigation search.

04The right way to use PAN and CIN

Treat the identifier as a key to identity, not to litigation. The reliable sequence is:

1. Confirm the exact name. For a company, use the CIN on the MCA to get the registered name, former names and directors. For an individual, use the PAN or other documents to fix the full legal name and, if you can, the father's name and address.
2. Search by name across eCourts at services.ecourts.gov.in, the relevant High Court and Supreme Court portals, and the NCLT at nclt.gov.in, trying each name variant and both pending and disposed matters.
3. Verify each hit back against the CIN and directors, or the individual's identifiers, so a similar name is not mistaken for your subject.

For the company and individual search methods in full, see how to find court cases against a company and how to find all cases against a person.

05The similar-name problem this solves

The reason people wish for a PAN or CIN search is the real pain it would cure: name collisions. Common names and inconsistent spellings make a name-only search both over-inclusive and under-inclusive at once. You cannot remove that problem by searching on the number, because the courts do not index the number, but you can contain it by using the number to confirm identity at both ends of the search.

PAN and CIN do not search litigation. They confirm identity. Match on the name, then let the identifier tell you whether the hit is really your person or company.

How entity matching works, and how to catch variants, is covered in how entity matching and name collisions work and how to search cases with misspelled names.

06What "nothing on record" actually means

Because the search is by name, a clean result carries the usual caveat, and knowing the PAN or CIN does not change it. "Nothing on record" means no matching case was found in the registries you searched, on the date you searched, under the names you searched. It does not rule out a case under a spelling or former name you did not try, a forum you did not reach, an undigitised record, or a matter filed after your search.

Record the names and forums you covered and the date, keep both pending and disposed, and be honest that an identifier confirmed the subject, not a clean history. This is not legal advice.

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.

ClawScore, at clawscore.clawlaw.in, is Claw's litigation and criminal-risk service built around exactly this reality. You give it a name, a company or a person, and it searches every matter across 9,102 courts, benches and forums and returns one scored Excel workbook: a Summary tab with a ClawScore risk band (Clean, Low, Moderate or High), a Matters tab, a Related parties tab that pulls in directors and guarantors, and a Coverage tab recording what was searched. Because the courts are searched by name and not by PAN or CIN, every finding carries a MATCH CONFIDENCE, so a similar name is flagged for you to verify rather than treated as certain, and you use the CIN or other identifiers to confirm it. It draws on 30 crore+ judgments, with Supreme Court decisions from 1950 and High Court decisions from 1990, and returns results in under 5 seconds. Claw does not train its AI models on your documents. For an entity you need to watch, Constant Monitoring runs daily, weekly or monthly scans and reports what is New, Changed or Closed.

Create a FREE Claw account to run a first-pass litigation check by name, and use case search across Indian courts to surface cases you can then confirm against the PAN or CIN.

08Sources and further reading

• eCourts Services (district and subordinate courts, name based): services.ecourts.gov.in
• Ministry of Corporate Affairs (CIN and company records): mca.gov.in
• NCLT (company and insolvency matters): nclt.gov.in
• National Judicial Data Grid: njdg.ecourts.gov.in
• Claw: clawlaw.in

Government portals are the authoritative record. This explainer is general information, not legal advice; confirm any finding against the relevant official portal before acting.

09Frequently asked questions