Under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), what is the maximum…

Concept

Detention during an investigation runs on two independent clocks. One clock caps the total time an accused may be detained while the investigation continues, after which the right to default bail arises. The other caps how much of that time may be spent in the custody of the investigating police rather than in jail. The second clock is an aggregate ceiling: it counts every remand order together, so repeated extensions divide the same allowance instead of adding to it.

Applying it to this question

1. Section 187 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 governs detention pending investigation once the twenty-four hours allowed by Section 58 have run out and the investigation is still incomplete.

2. Section 187(2) empowers a Magistrate to authorise detention in the custody of the police for a term not exceeding fifteen days in the whole.

3. What the BNSS changed is when those days may be taken, not how many there are: they may now be availed in whole or in parts at any time during the initial forty days (where the total detention limit is ninety days) or sixty days (where that limit is sixty days). Under Section 167 of the earlier Code of Criminal Procedure the same fifteen days had to fall inside the first fifteen days of remand.

4. Because the allowance is fixed "in the whole", periodic remand orders by the Magistrate split those fifteen days between them; they cannot extend the total. The maximum aggregate police custody is therefore fifteen days.

Cross-check: what the other periods measure

Thirty days is not a period that Section 187 works with; a thirty-day police-custody power belongs to special legislation such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The answer is fifteen days.