New Criminal Laws: BNS, BNSS and BSA Explained

On 1 July 2024 India replaced the three codes that had governed its criminal justice system since colonial times. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 took the place of the Indian Penal Code, 1860; the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 took the place of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973; and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 took the place of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. Examiners have asked about these laws in almost every paper since, because the change touches the substantive law of crimes, the procedure of investigation and trial, and the law of evidence all at once. These notes set out what each law does, the section numbers worth memorising, and the new ideas the codes introduce.

How the three laws were made

The Ministry of Home Affairs set up the Committee for Reform in Criminal Laws in 2020 under Professor Ranbir Singh, former Vice-Chancellor of the National Law University, Delhi. Three Bills drawn from that exercise were introduced in the Lok Sabha on 11 August 2023 by Home Minister Amit Shah and sent to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs. They were withdrawn and reintroduced in revised form in December 2023, passed by the Lok Sabha on 20 December 2023 and by the Rajya Sabha on 21 December 2023, and received the assent of the President on 25 December 2023. They are Act 45, Act 46 and Act 47 of 2023 respectively. The three came into force together on 1 July 2024. The laws are not retrospective: an offence committed before that date is still investigated and tried under the old codes, so the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure will remain in courtrooms for years.

Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023

The Sanhita is the substantive law that defines offences and prescribes punishments. It carries 358 sections against the 511 of the Indian Penal Code, because several chapters were merged and a number of obsolete offences were dropped. Section 4 lists the punishments, and for the first time community service appears as a punishment in Indian criminal law, available for a small group of petty offences such as attempting suicide to compel a public servant, defamation, misconduct in public by a drunken person and small thefts. Sedition under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code has no successor; in its place Section 152 punishes acts endangering the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India, such as exciting secession or armed rebellion. Organised crime, petty organised crime and terrorist acts enter the general criminal law for the first time, at Sections 111, 112 and 113, offences that earlier lived only in special statutes. Snatching becomes a distinct offence, and the murder of a person by a group of five or more on grounds of race, caste, community, sex, place of birth or language is punished with death or imprisonment for life.

Section numbers students are asked to match

Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023

The Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita is the procedural code, with 531 sections against the 484 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Its theme is speed and the use of technology. Zero FIR is given statutory form, so that information about an offence may be recorded at any police station irrespective of where the offence took place and then transferred to the station with jurisdiction. Information may be given electronically, and a complainant is entitled to a free copy of the first information report. Videography of search and seizure is made compulsory, and the recording is to be forwarded to the magistrate without delay. A forensic expert must visit the scene of crime and collect evidence in offences punishable with seven years of imprisonment or more. A trial may be held in the absence of a proclaimed offender who has absconded, with the court recording its reasons. The code fixes timelines through the process: charges are to be framed within sixty days of the first hearing, judgment is to be pronounced within forty-five days of the completion of the trial, a decision on sanction to prosecute a public servant is to be taken within one hundred and twenty days, and the victim must be informed of the progress of the investigation within ninety days.

Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023

The Sakshya Adhiniyam has 170 sections against the 167 of the Indian Evidence Act and keeps the old structure of relevancy, proof and production of evidence. Its main change is that electronic and digital records are placed on the same footing as paper: an electronic record is admissible as primary evidence, and the definition of a document now expressly covers e-mails, server logs, computer files, locational evidence and messages on digital devices. An electronic record produced in court must be accompanied by a certificate in the prescribed form. The Adhiniyam also allows evidence to be given electronically, so that a witness, an accused or an expert may depose through audio-video means from a designated place, which the courts had begun to allow by practice and which now has a statutory base.