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

A special National Investigation Agency court in Delhi granted default bail on Friday to U.S. national Matthew Aaron Van Dyke, arrested in March over alleged drone training for ethnic armed groups in Myanmar. Special Judge Prashant Sharma of the Rouse Avenue Court set a personal bond of ₹1 lakh and a surety of the same amount. Van Dyke must remain in Delhi and appear before the NIA when called.

The judge held that the chargesheet the agency filed this month was piecemeal. It charged Van Dyke and six Ukrainian co-accused under sections 21 and 23 of the Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025, for illegal entry, stay and movement. It did not include Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act counts. The NIA told the court it still needed time "to ascertain and verify the true and complete facts about the commission of offences under the UAPA."

Sharma said an incomplete chargesheet cannot be used to defeat the default-bail clock in section 187(3) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, the successor to the old section 167(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code. Because the UAPA investigation is still open, he said, it cannot be concluded that Van Dyke has lost the right to bail after 180 days in custody.

How the case was built

Van Dyke was arrested at Kolkata airport on 13 March. Six Ukrainian nationals were arrested the same day at Lucknow and Delhi airports. The NIA alleged the group ran a planned course in drone warfare, assembly and jamming for ethnic armed group operatives, and that drone consignments originating in Europe were delivered to contacts in Mizoram. The court gave the agency 11 days of custody on 16 March. The accused then went into judicial custody, including a period in Tihar Jail.

Van Dyke's family asked the U.S. government for consular pressure and said he had been denied basic detainee rights. He applied for bail on 17 September. The court heard the matter in camera. In the same sitting the judge said the six Ukrainians would be entitled to default bail on the same reasoning if they file applications.

The legal point is technical and it is the whole case. UAPA investigations can hold an accused longer than ordinary crime files. That extra time depends on the anti-terror sections actually being in the chargesheet. File only immigration counts, and the 180-day default-bail rule applies. The NIA's own paper said the UAPA work was unfinished. The court treated that sentence as the reason bail had to be granted, not as a reason to keep the accused inside.

What bail does not settle

Default bail is not an acquittal. The immigration charges remain. The UAPA file can still be added later if the agency produces the evidence it said it still needs. Van Dyke cannot leave Delhi, let alone India, without a further order. The six Ukrainians are in the same legal position the moment they apply.

For the NIA the ruling is a warning about sequencing. Holding a high-profile foreign national on a terror theory while charging him only with passport offences invites exactly this result. For the court the ruling is a restatement of a rule Indian criminal law has repeated for decades: the state cannot stop the clock by filing a thin chargesheet and promising a thicker one.