Internship with a Public Prosecutor: How It Works

There is no national scheme for interning with a Public Prosecutor. No portal, no common application, no advertised cycle. You approach a prosecutor directly or through the Directorate of Prosecution in your state, usually in person. It is one of the least applied for internships in the country, which is exactly why it is available.

Who the prosecutors are

It helps to know who you are writing to. Criminal prosecution on behalf of the State is conducted by officers at different levels:

• Assistant Public Prosecutors appear in Magistrate courts and handle the bulk of everyday criminal work.
• Additional Public Prosecutors and Public Prosecutors appear in Sessions courts, handling the serious offences.
• Government Advocates and Additional Advocates General appear for the State in the High Court, on both criminal and civil matters.
• The Advocate General is the State’s senior most law officer.

Most states have a Directorate of Prosecution that administers the prosecutors attached to the district courts. Where one exists, that is a sensible first point of contact for a formal request.

How to approach

Three routes work in practice.

1. Directly at the District Court. The prosecutors’ offices are in the court complex. Go on a working morning, ask at the Bar Association or the court staff for the APP or PP room, and make your request in person with a college letter.
2. Through the Directorate of Prosecution. A written application addressed to the Director, forwarded by your college, asking for permission to intern with a prosecutor for a stated period. Slower, but it produces a clean approval that avoids questions later.
3. Through the Advocate General’s office for High Court level work. Some Advocate General offices in India do advertise internships periodically, so it is worth checking that office’s notices.

Carry a letter from your college stating the dates. For government offices this is not optional in the way it sometimes is with a private chamber.

What makes this internship different

Almost every criminal law internship a student does is on the defence side. You learn how to argue for bail, how to cross examine a prosecution witness, how to find the gaps in an investigation. Spending a month on the other side changes your understanding of the same case file.

From a prosecutor’s desk you see the case as it arrives: the First Information Report, the case diary, the statements recorded during investigation, the medical and forensic reports, and the charge sheet being settled. You see why some prosecutions are weak from the beginning, and how much depends on the quality of the investigation rather than on the advocacy.

You also see volume. A single Assistant Public Prosecutor may be handling a very large number of matters listed on the same day, which explains a great deal about how criminal courts actually function.

What you will be asked to do

Reading, mostly, and some drafting.

• Reading case diaries and charge sheets and summarising what the prosecution case is.
• Checking whether the sections applied match the facts alleged, which since 1 July 2024 means working with the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 alongside the older provisions in cases that began earlier.
• Preparing lists of witnesses and tracking which have been examined.
• Researching a point of law on sentencing, bail opposition or admissibility.
• Sitting in court while matters are conducted.

Because the transition to the new criminal laws means many offices are running old and new provisions side by side, interns who are comfortable with the section mapping are genuinely useful right now.

Confidentiality

Take this seriously. You will be reading investigation material in live criminal cases, often involving identifiable complainants and accused persons. None of it is discussed outside the office, nothing is photographed, and nothing goes online. In matters involving sexual offences or children there are additional statutory restrictions on disclosure of identity. If you are unsure whether something can be mentioned, assume it cannot.

Is it paid

No. These are unpaid, and government offices rarely have any mechanism to pay an intern even if they wished to. Private chambers of former prosecutors sometimes advertise paid internships, but that is a different thing from interning in the prosecution office itself.

Does it count for the BCI requirement

Yes. Rule 25 of the Legal Education Rules, 2008 permits internships with legal functionaries and regulatory authorities among others, and a prosecutor is plainly within that. Make sure the certificate states the office, the period and the nature of the work, and get it signed before you leave.

What to expect from the office itself

Government offices are not chambers. The room may be shared, there may be no desk for you, and the day runs on the court’s timetable rather than an office one. Prosecutors are usually in court from the time the board starts, so the reading and discussion happen early in the morning or after the court rises.

Nobody will structure the internship for you. If you sit quietly waiting to be given work, you will spend four weeks doing very little. The students who get the most ask for a file on the first day, read it properly, and come back with a written summary nobody asked for. That single habit usually changes how the rest of the month goes.

Take a notebook rather than a laptop. Most of what is useful here is said rather than circulated, and in many offices you will not be permitted to photograph or copy anything in any case.

Who should do this

Anyone considering a career in criminal law, and particularly anyone thinking about the judicial services or a prosecution cadre. Both examinations are built on criminal procedure, and a month watching procedure applied is worth a great deal of reading.

It is also worth doing if you intend to practise on the defence side. Knowing how the prosecution builds and presents a case, and where it tends to be weak, is directly useful when you are the one opposing it.

It is also the right internship if you want to write seriously about criminal justice, because you will have seen things that are not visible from the defence side or from the reported judgments. If you do write it up, be careful to keep every case detail out, and write about the system rather than the files you read.