How to Track Cases in the Patna High Court

Where the Patna High Court publishes case data

Step-by-step: tracking a case

1. 1

   Work out which number you hold

   A token or filing number is issued at presentation; a registration number once scrutiny clears. The "By Token No." page is headed CASE STATUS but asks for Case Type plus Filing Number plus Year — that is the pre-registration route.

2. 2

   Pick the form, then the exact case type

   Civil and criminal are separate forms with separate dropdowns. Choose the exact case type from the table below, enter number and year, and clear the CAPTCHA.

3. 3

   Copy the CNR off the result and use it from then on

   The CNR is stable; the Old / New Case Number toggle on eCourts exists because case numbers are not. With a CNR in hand, go straight to the court's own CNR search at patnahighcourt.gov.in/casesearch/cnr_no.

Case types you will get wrong

Patna publishes 45 case types on eCourts. These are the pairs that cost hearings.

COMP. APP is a Company Appeal; COMPAN. APP is a Compensation Appeal. Two characters apart, different registries. The company family then splits three ways on the bench suffix — 13, 37 and 38 — with 20 COMP. APPLIC and 21 COMP PET alongside. The (DB)/(SJ) suffix is load-bearing: CR. APP (DB) 200/2024 is Raghuwar Pathak vs The State of Bihar; CR. APP (SJ) 200/2024 is Bulet Pandey @ Shubh Narain Pandey vs The State of Bihar. Same number, same year, two unrelated matters. On BNSS and "(OLD)" types: the criminal vocabulary is still entirely CrPC-era — code 35 is expressly "CR. APP. 341 CR. P.C." No parallel BNSS-named set exists, so Bihar filings made after 1 July 2024 still register into the CrPC-named buckets. Nor is there an "(OLD)" shadow type: defective filings get their own page, covered under quirks below.

The CNR prefix is BRHC01, not PHHC

Patna CNRs are built on the state code, not the court's name. Verified against live records: CWJC 1000/2024, Dr. Puranjay Kumar vs The State of Bihar, carries CNR BRHC011238582023; CR. MISC. 500/2025, Ankit Patel vs The State of Bihar, carries BRHC011282292024; and CR. APP (DB) 200/2024, Raghuwar Pathak vs The State of Bihar, carries BRHC010162682024.

BR for Bihar, HC, then 01 for the establishment. PHHC is Punjab & Haryana — 2025:PHHC:-style strings in search results belong to that court, not this one.

Note the second trap. The last four digits of the CNR are not reliably the registration year. CWJC 1000/2024 carries a CNR ending 2023; CR. MISC. 500/2025 ends 2024. The CNR is allotted when the matter enters the system, which can be the year before registration. Never reconstruct a CNR — read it off the record.

Downloading orders and judgments

The court runs its own judgment search, separate from eCourts, at patnahighcourt.gov.in/free_text_search — "PATNA HIGH COURT JUDGEMENT SEARCH". It takes keywords to include and exclude, party name, case type, number and year, three judge slots, a Bench dropdown (SJ / DB / FULL BENCH/ SPECIAL BENCH) and a District dropdown covering Bihar's districts. Two limits are set independently: a date range (From/To, with Within Week / Within Month / Within Year / Since Inception(2008) presets) and a result cap of 500, 1000 or 2000. Set both deliberately. A judgments-vs-orders toggle decides which corpus you search.

Narrower routes: "JUDGEMENTS BY CASE NUMBER" at /judgments/caseno, and "Orders by Judge Name" at /orderslist/ALL, which needs a judge and a single date; it will not sweep a range.

On eCourts HC Services, the orders menu offers Case Number, Filing Number, Judge Wise, Party Name, Order Date and Neutral Citation Number.

Reading a Patna PDF: every page after the first carries a running footer in short-code form — "Patna High Court CR. MISC. No.58371 of 2025 dt.16-01-2026" — with n/N pagination, so you can tell at once whether a copy is complete. Page 1 carries no footer; it is anchored instead by the full header block ("IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA / CRIMINAL MISCELLANEOUS No.58371 of 2025").

The block after the signature is the useful part. It reads AFR/NAFR: N.A.F.R.; CAV DATE: 10.12.2025; Uploading Date: 16.01.2026; Transmission Date: 16.01.2026. AFR/NAFR says whether the judgment is approved for reporting. Uploading Date is the field to cite when asked when a judgment became available — it is stamped on the document, and here sits over a month after the CAV date.

Patna's neutral citation code is PATHC. Seen stamped: 2025:PATHC:102675-DB (Division Bench) and 2026:PATHC:57908 (single judge, no suffix). Copy the string exactly as stamped, including or omitting the suffix as it appears; not every uploaded order carries one.

Cause lists

The page at patnahighcourt.gov.in/causelist/home is headed DAILY CAUSE LIST with seven ways in: Court Number Wise, Judge Name Wise, AUIN Wise, Advocate Name Wise, Case Number Wise, Party Name Wise, and Entire Cause List. A Virtual Hybrid Hearing link sits alongside.

Advocate Name Wise is the mode to build a routine around: it is keyed to advocate name rather than court number. All seven are CAPTCHA-gated.

The page publishes no upload-time or "last generated" field, so the date selector is the only reliable indicator of which list you are viewing. Check the selected date before relying on a board.

Quirks specific to the Patna High Court

• Hindi-translated judgments

  At patnahighcourt.gov.in/judicialorders/hindi, headed "हिंदी में अनुवादित निर्णय/आदेश", the court publishes a browse index of translated decisions with Sl.No., Case Number, Title and Date of Order. There are no search inputs. The page states the translations are for information and educational purposes only and not valid for judicial or official use. Cite the English original.

• List of Defective Tokens

  Patna's defective-filing route is a page, not a case type, and it is searched by Date of Filing, not by token number. If a filing has gone quiet, run the date you presented on. Per the court's own notification, defective proceedings are published daily at closing time against token number, case type, party name and the advocate through whom the proceeding was filed.

• Certified copies run on two different pages

  The page at /certified_copy is headed "COPY STATUS SEARCH" and only checks an application already made. It needs a Requisition No., or Case No. plus Case Type and Year (the year dropdown runs 2000-2030 — a dropdown range, not a coverage statement). The page at /eccopy — "ई-सत्यापित प्रतिलिपि पोर्टल" / e-Certified Copy — is the application route, behind a login. Registration asks applicant type (Advocate / Party / Public Officer / Any Other User), gender and an identity proof (Aadhaar, Voter ID or Passport).

• The Online Display Board is not live

  The board at /odb shows court number and case number, and states on its face that there may be a time gap in internet transmission and that exact status should be confirmed at the concerned court.

• Police-station search

  The page at /casesearch/ps, headed "CASE STATUS BY POLICE STATION", reaches criminal matters from the FIR side. It takes four inputs — District and Police Station, both dropdowns with the district picked first, then Case Number and Year. Patna orders print the originating case on page one, as "Arising Out of PS. Case No.-27 Year-2023" — but that same slot carries agency matters that the police-station list cannot resolve: the order above continues "Thana- E.C.I.R (GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL)", an Enforcement Directorate ECIR, not a thana FIR.

• AUIN

  AUIN appears in both case status and the cause list. Its form asks Nature of Case, AUIN and Year of Token, so it is keyed to the filing stage; the court's pages do not expand the acronym.

Common questions