Last verified: July 2026
A district court in Nagpur convicts a man of cheating on a Thursday and sentences him to four years. His family is stunned; his lawyer says the evidence was thin and the judgment ignored half the defence witnesses. Everyone in the room understands, in a vague way, that “we can appeal.” What almost nobody in that room knows is that a clock started the moment the judge signed the order, that the appeal has to go to a specific court and not just “a higher court,” and that the man does not automatically have to sit in jail while the appeal is heard – but only if someone files the right application in time.
That gap between knowing an appeal exists and knowing how to actually file one is where most convicts lose ground they cannot recover. A conviction is not the end of the road in Indian criminal law. It is the start of a second, structured stage that the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (“BNSS”) – the code that replaced the old Code of Criminal Procedure on 1 July 2024 – lays out in Chapter XXXI, “Appeals,” across Sections 413 to 435. An appeal is not a favour the higher court does you; for most convictions it is a statutory right, and it is a genuine rehearing on both the facts and the law, not a narrow review for technical errors.
The catch is that the right is time-bound and forum-specific. Send the appeal to the wrong court, or file it after the limitation period has quietly run out, and a strong case on the merits can be lost before a single judge reads the grounds. This guide walks through the whole sequence: what you can appeal, which court hears it, how long you have, exactly what to file, and – the question that matters most to the convict and the family – how to secure suspension of the sentence and bail so the appeal is fought from outside the prison gate rather than inside it.
The short version: To appeal a criminal conviction in India, you file a memorandum of appeal, with a certified copy of the judgment, in the correct appellate court under Section 415 of the BNSS – the Court of Session if you were convicted by a Magistrate, the High Court if you were convicted by a Sessions Court or sentenced to more than seven years, and the Supreme Court in the narrow case of a High Court’s original-side conviction. You have 30 days to appeal to the Court of Session and 60 days to the High Court, running from the date of sentence, with delay condonable for good reason. Along with the appeal, file an application under Section 430 to suspend the sentence and release you on bail while the appeal is pending.
Here is how each of those steps works, and where the common mistakes are.
What an appeal is – and what it is not
An appeal against conviction is a rehearing. The appellate court can go back into the evidence, re-read the trial record, reassess whether the witnesses were believable, and decide for itself whether the conviction and the sentence should stand. This is what makes an appeal more powerful than the two remedies people often confuse it with.
A revision (under Sections 438 to 442 of the BNSS) is narrower. A revisional court checks the legality, correctness, and propriety of an order; it does not re-appreciate evidence the way an appellate court does, and it will not ordinarily convert an acquittal into a conviction. Revision is the fallback where no appeal lies, or where the person seeking it is not the convict.
A review in the criminal context is narrower still, and largely confined to the Supreme Court correcting its own errors. For a convict who has just been sentenced, none of this is the first move. The first move is the appeal, because only the appeal gives a full second look at the facts.
One more distinction matters at the outset. This guide is about appealing a conviction – the convict’s own appeal. The BNSS also allows appeals in the other direction: the State can appeal against an inadequate sentence (Section 418), and against an acquittal with the High Court’s leave (Section 419). Those are different animals with different rules, and they are not the subject here.
Can you appeal? What the BNSS allows and bars
The governing principle is in Section 413: no appeal lies from any judgment or order of a criminal court except as provided by the BNSS or another law in force. In other words, the right to appeal is not automatic in the abstract – it exists only where the statute grants it. For an ordinary conviction after a full trial, the statute does grant it, so the right is real. But three situations narrow or remove it, and it is worth checking that none of them applies to you before you start drafting.
Conviction on a guilty plea (Section 416). If you pleaded guilty and were convicted on that plea, your right to appeal is sharply cut down. Where the conviction is by a Court of Session, Magistrate, or High Court on a plea of guilty, there is essentially no appeal on the facts – the most you can challenge is the extent or legality of the sentence, not the finding of guilt you yourself admitted.
Petty cases (Section 417). The BNSS bars appeals in trivial matters – for instance where a High Court passes only a small fine, or a Sessions or Magistrate’s court imposes a very short sentence or small fine within defined limits. The idea is that the appellate machinery should not be clogged by de minimis sentences. Note the carve-out: if such a small sentence is combined with another punishment, the bar may not apply.
The victim’s parallel right. The proviso to Section 413 gives the victim a right to appeal – against an acquittal, against a conviction for a lesser offence, or against inadequate compensation – to the court where an appeal against the conviction would ordinarily lie. This is not the convict’s remedy, but it is worth knowing it exists, because a convict who succeeds partially may still face a victim’s cross-appeal.
If none of the bars applies, you have a right of appeal. The next question is where it goes.
Which court hears your appeal (Section 415)
This is the section that decides everything about the mechanics of your appeal, and getting it wrong is the most expensive error in the whole process. Section 415 of the BNSS ties the appellate forum to the court that convicted you and the length of the sentence. The ladder is:
| Convicted by | Appeal goes to | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Magistrate of the first or second class | Court of Session | Any conviction by a Magistrate |
| Sessions Judge or Additional Sessions Judge | High Court | Conviction on trial held by a Sessions Court |
| Any court, where the sentence is more than 7 years | High Court | Sentence exceeding seven years’ imprisonment |
| High Court, in its extraordinary original criminal jurisdiction | Supreme Court | Conviction on original-side trial by the High Court |
Read the table as a set of rules rather than rows. If a Judicial Magistrate convicted you, your appeal is to the Court of Session – not the High Court. If a Sessions Court convicted you, or if any court sentenced you to more than seven years, your appeal is to the High Court. The only route directly to the Supreme Court as of right under this section is the rare case of a conviction by a High Court exercising extraordinary original criminal jurisdiction; the ordinary path to the Supreme Court is a later appeal or a special leave petition, not this one.
There is one modern, victim-facing addition to be aware of. Section 415(4) provides that an appeal against a sentence passed for certain serious sexual offences under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 – Sections 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, and 71 (the rape and related provisions) – must be disposed of within six months from the date the appeal is filed. This is a statutory push for speed in exactly the cases where delay does the most damage, and it is new relative to the old code’s silence.
Two practical notes. First, “more than seven years” is measured by the sentence actually imposed, so a Magistrate’s conviction that somehow carried a longer sentence, or a Sessions conviction, routes upward accordingly. Second, if multiple accused were convicted together in one trial and some have an appealable sentence, the BNSS allows the others a special right of appeal in the same matter, so co-accused should coordinate rather than assume only the most heavily sentenced can appeal.
| Where Does Your Criminal Appeal Go? (Section 415, BNSS 2023) | ||
| If you were convicted by… | Your appeal goes to… | Trigger |
| Magistrate (first or second class) | Court of Session | Any conviction by a Magistrate |
| Sessions Judge / Additional Sessions Judge | High Court | Trial held by a Sessions Court |
| Any court, sentence more than 7 years | High Court | Sentence exceeding 7 years |
| High Court (extraordinary original criminal jurisdiction) | Supreme Court | Conviction on original-side trial |
| Time to file: 30 days to the Court of Session, 60 days to the High Court, from the date of sentence (Limitation Act, 1963, Article 115). Delay condonable under Section 5. | ||
| Fast track: Appeals against sentences for sexual offences under Sections 64 to 71 of the BNS, 2023 must be decided within 6 months (Section 415(4)). | ||
Limitation and Condonation of Delay in Appeals
The right to appeal is worthless if you miss the window. Limitation for criminal appeals is not in the BNSS itself but in the Limitation Act, 1963 (Article 115), and the periods run from the date of the sentence or order, not from the date you receive the certified copy:
- Appeal to the Court of Session: 30 days.
- Appeal to the High Court: 60 days.
- Appeal against a sentence of death (to the appropriate court): 30 days.
Because the clock starts at sentencing, the single most important administrative step is to apply for the certified copy of the judgment on the day it is pronounced, so that drafting is not eating into the limitation period. The time taken to obtain the copy is generally excluded in computing limitation, but you have to actually apply for it to claim that exclusion.
If the period does lapse, the appeal is not necessarily dead. Section 5 of the Limitation Act allows the appellate court to condone delay where the appellant shows sufficient cause – illness, being in custody without legal help, delay in getting the copy, and similar reasons have all been accepted. Courts lean towards condoning delay in criminal appeals where refusing would cause a grave miscarriage of justice, because a person’s liberty is at stake. But condonation is discretionary and must be asked for by a separate, reasoned application; never treat it as a safety net you can rely on instead of filing on time.
Step by step: Filing the Appeal
With the forum and the deadline settled, the filing itself is a sequence of concrete tasks.
Step 1 – Obtain the certified copy of the judgment. Apply immediately after pronouncement. Section 423 of the BNSS requires that the petition of appeal be accompanied by a copy of the judgment or order appealed against. Without it, the appeal is incomplete.
Step 2 – Draft the memorandum (petition) of appeal and the grounds. This is the heart of the filing. The memorandum identifies the appellant, the judgment under challenge, and sets out the grounds of appeal – the specific reasons the conviction or sentence is wrong. Good grounds are precise: which finding was against the weight of evidence, which witness was wrongly believed, which legal ingredient of the offence was not proved, where the sentence is excessive. Vague grounds (“the judgment is bad in law”) invite summary dismissal.
Step 3 – Attach the supporting papers. Typically the certified copy of the judgment, the memorandum of appeal, a vakalatnama authorising your advocate, and the prescribed court fee. If you are also seeking suspension of sentence and bail, that application (see the next section) is filed along with the appeal.
Step 4 – Present the appeal in the correct court. File within limitation in the Court of Session or the High Court as Section 415 requires. An appeal to the Court of Session may be heard by the Sessions Judge or an Additional Sessions Judge.
Step 5 – The jail appeal route (Section 424). A convict who is in prison does not need to wait for a lawyer to reach them. Under Section 424 of the BNSS, an appellant in jail may present the appeal, and the grounds, to the officer in charge of the jail, who forwards it to the appropriate appellate court. This is a critical safeguard for undefended prisoners, and it means no convict should ever lose the right to appeal simply because they could not physically reach the court.
Staying out of jail: suspension of sentence and bail (Section 430)
Filing the appeal does not, by itself, stop the sentence from running. A convict who does nothing more will remain in prison while the appeal waits its turn, which can take months or years. The remedy is Section 430 of the BNSS, and it is the application that matters most to the family in practical terms.
Under Section 430, the appellate court may, for reasons recorded in writing, order that the execution of the sentence be suspended and that the appellant, if in confinement, be released on bail or on their own bond while the appeal is pending. Two features are important:
- The prosecutor is heard in serious cases. Where the conviction is for an offence punishable with death, imprisonment for life, or imprisonment of not less than ten years, the court must give the Public Prosecutor an opportunity to show cause in writing before releasing the convict. Suspension is not a formality in these cases.
- The convicting court can grant short-term bail. Where a person is sentenced to imprisonment not exceeding three years, or the offence is bailable and they are on bail, the trial court itself may release them on bail for enough time to prepare and file the appeal – so that the convict is not taken into custody in the gap between conviction and the appellate court taking up the matter.
The standard, however, is not the same across all sentences. For life imprisonment and the gravest offences, suspension is exceptional, not routine. The Supreme Court made this pointed in Chhotelal Yadav v. State of Jharkhand (2025 LiveLaw (SC) 1087), setting aside a High Court’s “cryptic” orders suspending life sentences in a murder case and holding that suspension of a life sentence is warranted only where there are exceptional circumstances – essentially, where the court can see a gross error in the trial judgment suggesting the appeal may actually succeed and end in acquittal. A bare assertion that the evidence was “general and omnibus” is not enough.
At the same time, courts have grown alert to the other side of the ledger: where an appeal cannot realistically be heard for years, continued incarceration of a convict whose appeal is pending starts to collide with the right to a speedy hearing under Article 21 of the Constitution. The practical takeaway is that a suspension application should be built on the specific weaknesses in the trial judgment and, where the appeal is old and unheard, on the delay itself.
What the appellate court can do (Section 427)
It helps to know, before you file, the full range of what the appellate court is empowered to do with your case. Section 427 of the BNSS gives it broad powers. On an appeal against conviction, the court may:
- reverse the conviction and acquit the appellant, or order a retrial;
- alter the finding while maintaining the sentence;
- reduce the sentence; or
- alter the nature of the sentence.
There is one power that convicts fear and one crucial safeguard against it. The appellate court can, in an appropriate case, enhance the sentence – but Section 427 protects the accused: the sentence cannot be enhanced without giving the accused an opportunity to be heard on the proposed enhancement, and an appeal filed by the accused cannot be turned into an enhancement by ambush. In practice, an ordinary appeal against conviction filed by the convict very rarely results in a heavier sentence, but the appellant should be advised that the theoretical possibility exists and is guarded by a notice requirement.
What happens after you file
Once the appeal is filed, it does not automatically get a full hearing. The appellate court first considers whether the appeal deserves to be admitted.
Summary dismissal (Section 425). If, on reading the petition and the record, the court finds no sufficient ground for interfering, it may dismiss the appeal summarily – though not, in most cases, without giving the appellant or their advocate a chance to be heard first. This is exactly why well-drafted grounds matter: a thin memorandum invites a summary end.
Admission and hearing. If the appeal is admitted, the court calls for the trial record, issues notice to the State, and fixes a hearing. Both sides argue on the record; the appellate court re-appreciates the evidence.
Further evidence (Section 432). Although an appeal is decided on the trial record, the appellate court may, where it thinks it necessary, take additional evidence itself or direct the trial court to take it. This is used sparingly – for genuinely necessary evidence, not to fill gaps a party should have covered at trial.
Judgment. The court then decides the appeal under its Section 427 powers – acquitting, confirming, altering, or (with notice) enhancing.
After the appellate judgment: further remedies
An appellate judgment is generally final – Section 434 of the BNSS provides that judgments and orders passed by an appellate court are, subject to limited exceptions, not open to further appeal. But “final” does not mean the road necessarily ends.
- If your first appeal was to the Court of Session and it went against you, the ordinary next step is not a second statutory appeal but a revision to the High Court (Sections 438-442), or, in the appropriate case, invoking the High Court’s inherent powers.
- If your appeal was decided by the High Court, the route to the Supreme Court is a Special Leave Petition under Article 136 of the Constitution – discretionary, not a right – or a statutory appeal where the High Court has, on reversing an acquittal, sentenced the accused to death, life, or ten years or more.
One humane provision closes the chapter. Section 435 deals with the abatement of appeals on the death of the appellant: an appeal against a conviction generally abates when the appellant dies – except an appeal against a sentence of fine, which can be continued by the legal representative, since the fine affects the estate.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Waiting for the certified copy before starting. Apply for it on day one; draft in parallel. Limitation runs from the sentence, not the copy.
- Filing in the wrong court. A Magistrate’s conviction goes to the Court of Session, not the High Court. Confirm the forum under Section 415 before drafting.
- Vague grounds of appeal. “The judgment is erroneous” invites summary dismissal. Tie each ground to a specific finding, witness, or missing ingredient.
- Forgetting the suspension application. Filing the appeal alone does not stop the sentence. File the Section 430 application together with the appeal.
- Assuming delay will always be condoned. Section 5 relief is discretionary. File within 30 or 60 days; treat condonation as a rescue, not a plan.
- Confusing appeal with revision. For a convict, the appeal – the full rehearing – is the primary remedy; revision is the fallback where no appeal lies.
Frequently asked questions
How much time do I have to file a criminal appeal?
Thirty days to the Court of Session and sixty days to the High Court, counted from the date of the sentence under Article 115 of the Limitation Act, 1963. Delay can be condoned under Section 5 for sufficient cause, but do not rely on it.
Can my sentence be increased if I appeal?
It is possible but rare. Under Section 427 of the BNSS the appellate court can enhance a sentence, but only after giving you an opportunity to be heard – it cannot be done by surprise. An ordinary convict’s appeal seldom ends in enhancement.
Do I have to stay in jail while my appeal is pending?
Not necessarily. You can apply under Section 430 for suspension of the sentence and release on bail. For lesser sentences this is commonly granted; for life imprisonment and the gravest offences it is exceptional and requires showing something close to a likely acquittal (Chhotelal Yadav, 2025).
Can I appeal if I pleaded guilty?
Largely no. Section 416 bars an appeal against a conviction based on your own guilty plea, except on the extent or legality of the sentence.
What if I am in jail and have no lawyer?
Use the jail appeal route under Section 424 – hand your appeal and grounds to the officer in charge of the jail, who must forward it to the appellate court.
Is there a faster track for any appeals?
Yes. Under Section 415(4), appeals against sentences for the serious sexual offences under Sections 64 to 71 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 must be disposed of within six months of filing.
What happens after the High Court decides my appeal?
The judgment is generally final under Section 434. Your remaining option is usually a Special Leave Petition to the Supreme Court under Article 136 of the Constitution, which is discretionary.
References
- Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, Chapter XXXI (Sections 413-435), especially Sections 413, 415, 416, 417, 423, 424, 425, 427, 430, 432, 434, and 435.
- The Limitation Act, 1963, Article 115 (period of limitation for criminal appeals) and Section 5 (condonation of delay).
- Chhotelal Yadav v. State of Jharkhand, 2025 LiveLaw (SC) 1087 (standard for suspension of a life sentence pending appeal).
- Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, Sections 64-71 (offences triggering the six-month disposal timeline under Section 415(4)).
