Section 223 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (“BNSS”) fundamentally alters the procedural architecture of complaint-case adjudication in Indian criminal law. Under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (“CrPC”), the stage preceding issuance of process was ordinarily ex parte: the Magistrate examined the complainant, evaluated the threshold material and, if sufficient ground existed, issued process without any participation by the proposed accused. The first proviso to Section 223(1) now prohibits cognizance without giving the accused an opportunity of being heard. The Supreme Court of India, in its landmark decisions in Kushal Kumar Agarwal v Directorate of Enforcement (2025) and Parvinder Singh v Directorate of Enforcement (2026), has characterised this protection as mandatory, substantive and integral to the Article 21 guarantee of fair trial. Yet the provision leaves several critical questions unresolved: the precise point at which the hearing must occur, the materials that may be considered, the permissible degree of participation, its interaction with special statutes such as the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 and the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, and the consequences for expeditious justice. This paper employs doctrinal and comparative legal research methodology to argue that Section 223 should be understood as creating “controlled threshold adversariality”—a meaningful but confined hearing directed to legal maintainability and the existence of a prima facie basis for cognizance, without permitting cross-examination, contested defence evidence or a premature trial. Through a comprehensive analysis of the emerging judicial precedent, statutory architecture and constitutional implications, this paper further proposes a uniform procedural framework of ten practice directions designed to reconcile the protection against abusive prosecution with the complainant’s right of access to justice.