Delhi court grants default bail to Matthew Van Dyke after NIA files a partial chargesheet

A special NIA court at Rouse Avenue on Friday granted default bail to US national Matthew Aaron Van Dyke, arrested on 13 March at Kolkata airport and held since then in Tihar Jail on a case that began as a terror investigation and arrived in court as an immigration file.

Special Judge Prashant Sharma set a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh and a surety of the same amount. Van Dyke must remain in Delhi and appear before the NIA when called. He had asked to travel abroad. That request is listed for 22 September. The chargesheet is due for consideration on 1 October.

The six Ukrainian nationals arrested the same day, at Lucknow and Delhi airports, were told they are entitled to default bail if they file the paperwork. Their names on the agency file are Hurba Petro, Slyviak Taras, Ivan Sukmanovskyi, Stefankiv Marian, Honcharuk Maksim and Kaminskyi Viktor.

Why the clock ran out

Default bail under section 187(3) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, the successor to section 167(2) of the old Criminal Procedure Code, is a right. If the agency does not file a complete chargesheet within the permitted time, the accused can walk, subject to bond. For Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act offences the window is 180 days. Van Dyke crossed that line.

The NIA had last week filed a chargesheet under sections 21 and 23 of the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, illegal entry and related movement, and had not invoked UAPA. The agency wrote that “more time is required to ascertain and verify the true and complete facts about the commission of offences under the UAPA.” Judge Sharma called that a piecemeal chargesheet. He said an agency cannot stop the default-bail clock by filing an incomplete paper while keeping the heavier statute in reserve.

“As such, investigating agency cannot circumvent sec. 187(3) BNSS by filing incomplete charge-sheet, for the purpose of denying default bail,” the order said.

What the agency still alleges

The live investigation, on the NIA’s own telling, is larger than visa offences. The agency has said the seven men crossed into Myanmar, gave “pre-scheduled training” in drone operations, assembly and jamming to ethnic armed groups, and are being examined for a conspiracy that touches groups on both sides of the India-Myanmar border. After the 13 March arrests the court gave the NIA 11 days of police custody, then judicial custody.

Those allegations are not findings. They were not put into the chargesheet that the court had in front of it on Friday. The immigration sections the agency did use are compoundable at the level of the Foreigners Regional Registration Officer. That mismatch is why the bail application succeeded.

The diplomatic noise around the cell

Van Dyke’s family has asked the US government to intervene, saying he was denied basic detainee rights in Tihar. He is a public figure in his own country, a filmmaker and former fighter who has appeared in other conflict zones. Indian coverage has used the word mercenary. The court used the word accused, and then the word bail.

He is not free to leave India. He is free to leave Tihar, if the bond is furnished, and required to stay inside Delhi. The NIA can still file a UAPA chargesheet later. If it does, the court will have a different paper to read. Friday’s order is about the paper that was filed, the 180 days that passed, and a rule that does not let the state keep a person in prison on a statute it has not yet charged.