The 15-Day Staggered Remand Glitch: How Section 187 BNSS Stretched the Clock on Police Custody

Here is the paradox at the heart of India's newest criminal procedure code: An accused person can still only be handed to the police for a total of 15 days of custodial interrogation. That number did not change when the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 was repealed and replaced by the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS Section 187).

But when those 15 days can be used changed completely. Under the old law, police custody was a "use it in the first 15 days or lose it" game. Under Section 187(2) BNSS, it has become a savings account - police can now "bank" custody days and spend them in instalments across the first 40 or 60 days of detention (see Delhi Law Academy Section 187 Analysis).

That is the staggered remand glitch. In July 2026, the Supreme Court ruled in State of AP v. Suda Suresh (reported on LawBeat) that this legislative shift is entirely constitutional, intended, and must not be shut down by lower courts imposing inflexible deadlines.

Let's walk through how we got here, why this is a genuine loophole, and the other quiet cracks in the BNSS that defence lawyers should be tracking.

For three decades, one rule governed police custody in India: police custody could only be granted within the first 15 days from the date of arrest. This flowed from the Supreme Court's reading of Section 167(2) CrPC in CBI v. Anupam J. Kulkarni (1992), which held that the words "15 days in the whole" meant that once an accused was placed in police custody for the maximum permissible period - whether by one order or several smaller orders - any further detention had to be in judicial custody, not police custody.

That rule was drilled into every remand court in India. A slew of judgments repeated it as settled law: - Devender Kumar v. State of Haryana (2010): Reaffirmed that police remand is strictly limited to the first 15 days after arrest. - Satyajit Ballubhai Desai v. State of Gujarat (2011): Held that after the expiry of the first 15 days, further remand during investigation can only be in judicial custody. - Dhanraj Aswani v. Amar S. Mulchandani (2023): Confirmed that police custody cannot exceed 15 days for a single transaction, even if new offences surface later.

The policy logic was simple and protective: the first fortnight after arrest is when custodial coercion is most dangerous. The law wanted the "window of vulnerability" to be short, bright, and over.

Then came V. Senthil Balaji v. State, decided just months before the BNSS was enacted. A two-judge bench of Justices A.S. Bopanna and M.M. Sundresh looked at the same words of Section 167(2) CrPC - "from time to time", "such custody", "in the whole" - and reached the opposite conclusion from Anupam J. Kulkarni.

The majority held that nowhere does Section 167(2) say police custody must be confined to the first 15 days of remand. Instead, the 15 days is the maximum aggregate that can be granted to the police, and it can be doled out "from time to time" spanning the entire 60 or 90-day investigation period. The Court observed that any other interpretation "would seriously impair the power of investigation."

Critically, the Senthil Balaji bench referred the larger question - whether the 15-day police custody period is confined to the first 15 days or spans the whole investigation - to a larger Bench for authoritative settlement.

So as of August 2023, Indian law on police custody was split with the big question pending before a larger bench.

Enter the BNSS, notified on 25 December 2023 and brought into force on 1 July 2024. Section 187, the reincarnation of Section 167 CrPC, did something remarkable: it legislated the *Senthil Balaji* majority's view into black-letter text, thereby sidestepping the pending larger-Bench reference altogether.

Section 187(2) BNSS empowers the Magistrate to authorise detention:

> "from time to time… for a term not exceeding fifteen days in the whole, or in parts, at any time during the initial forty days or sixty days out of detention period of sixty days or ninety days..."

Read that again: "fifteen days in the whole, *or in parts*, at *any time* during the initial forty days or sixty days."

The structural consequences highlighted in CJP India's Paradigm Shift Analysis are enormous: - No more 'use it or lose it': Police can keep an accused in judicial custody, let the investigation develop for weeks, and then - when a new recovery or digital lead emerges - pull the accused out for a fresh slice of police custody. - The 60/90-day outer limit still applies to total detention, with 90 days for offences punishable with death/life/10+ years, and 60 days for all others. - No 'exceptional circumstances' test is required by Section 187(2) - the staggered window is textual and unconditional.

If there was any doubt that courts would read Section 187(2) broadly, the Supreme Court (Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta) demolished it in State of Andhra Pradesh v. Suda Suresh Veera Venkata Naga Raju (July 2026).

The facts involved a police inspector accused in a custodial death case. The Magistrate granted police custody but imposed an absolute outer deadline; the High Court affirmed those conditions.

The Bench also clarified that Section 38 BNSS does not give an accused a right to have a lawyer physically present throughout interrogation, and videography need only cover actual interrogation and recovery proceedings.

Here is a side-by-side comparative matrix of Section 167 CrPC vs Section 187 BNSS:

The staggered remand glitch does not exist in isolation. The BNSS quietly introduced several other structural changes:

As criticized in The Leaflet's BNSS Commentary, Section 187 represents a major expansion of state custody power.