A summons is a legal document that is issued by a Court on a person involved in a legal

proceeding. When a legal action is taken against a person or when any person is required to
appear in the court as a witness in a court proceedings, to call upon such person and ensure his
presence on the given date of the proceedings, summons is served. If the summons is not duly
served then no action can be taken against the defendant. If defendant fails to attend court after
receiving summons, he will be ex-parte by the Court. Section 27 and Order V of the Code of
Civil Procedure, 1908 (In short ‘CPC’) deal with ‘Service of Summons’ on the
defendant/Respondent. Order 16 deals with summoning and attendance of witnesses. Sections 61
to 69 of Cr.P.C deals with service of summons on accused and witness. 

Service through WhatsApp: WhatsApp, needless to explain, is one of the most popular messaging
application used by people all over the world. The application has threefold tests to check the status
of a sent message. It provides ‘one ttick’ for messages that are sent, ‘double tick’ for messages that
are received and ‘a blue double tick’ for messages that have been either read or at least opened.
In Tata Sons v. John Doe, the Delhi High Court permitted the plaintiff to serve summons to the
defendant via WhatsApp and e-mail. The landmark case in this regard, however, is Ruma Pal v.
Kumar. In this case, the defendant husband had fled to Australia to avoid any suit filed by his wife
for domestic violence and it was very difficult to serve
summons while he was in Australia. Justice Surabhi Sharma of the Delhi High Court allowed the
plaintiff to serve the summons through WhatsApp and also held that double tick on WhatsApp shall
be the conclusive proof of the receipt of the summons.
Order V of the Civil Procedure Code, 1908 (hereinafter, CPC) deals with the procedure
of service of summons on the defendants and respondents in a civil suit while Order XVI
of the Code deals with the procedure of service of sum mons on the witnesses in the
proceeding. There are 30 rules under Order V that give detail explanation of the procedure of issue
and service of summons distinctly.
Rules 1 to 8 specifically deal with the issue of summons and Rules 9 to 30 deal with the service of
summons and various catena in service of summons. These provisions explain when the summon
should be issued by the court and documents or information that should be contained in the
summons document. Further, it explains how it should be served and ensure that the service is
complete.

 Summons to witness.-
The provisions in sections 27, 28 and 29 shall apply to summonses to give evidence or
to produce documents or other material objects.
 
 Penalty for default.-
The Court may compel the attendance of any person to whom a summons has
been issued under section 30 and for that purpose may-
(a) issue a warrant for his arrest;
(b) attach and sell his property;
(c) impose a fine upon him not exceeding five hundred rupees;
(d) order him to furnish security for his appearance and in default commit him
to the civil prison.