Keywords- Indian Penal Code, Criminal Law, Parliament, Bills
The central government introduced three bills namely- Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, Bhartiya Sakshya Bill to replace the Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure, and Indian Evidence Act.
These bills were introduced on August 10th, and they were further referred for examination to the parliamentary standing committee headed by Brij Lal, submitted its report to Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar on November 10th.
The main concern raised by the committee was use of Hindi names for the bill, which was found to be violative of Article 348, which states that all proceedings in Supreme Court and High Court shall be in the English Language. However, the Ministery of Home Affairs defended the same by saying that the text within the document was in English language and hence, it wasn’t violative of Article 348.
The key recommendations from the committee on the three bills were-
- Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita
Section 153AA of IPC punishes the offenders for knowingly carrying arms in any procession or organizing such public processions using arms or drills. It is opinionated that this might encourage people to organize processions using arms and disturb peace and promote violence among groups. But the date of enforcement of Section 153AA was not specified, hence no need to penalize such people was required.
They also suggested maintaining gender neutrality in Section 377 of IPC. The Hon’ble Supreme Court in 2018 decriminalized all private consensual sexual acts between adults legal including homosexual ones.
However, the provision remains applicable to all forms of non-consensual sexual activity between adults or with minors.
The committee suggested aligning the motive of the bill with gender neutral offences and punishing those acts which the Supreme Court didn’t criminalize.
Another major recommendation was to replace the word ‘mental illnesses’ with unsound mind. Mental illness is a broad term, and it covers mood swings, anger issues, personality disorders and voluntarily intoxication like drugs and alcohol.
This may help the accused to escape from the trial and it may serve as an easy defense for him.
2.Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita
The committee suggested that the use of handcuffs as outlined in Section 43(3) is appropriately restricted to heinous crimes and the word ‘economic offences’ should be deleted from the provision as there is a range between petty offences to serious ones.
They also recommended that the modes to register online FIR should only be authorized by State authorities as it may create chaos for law enforcing agencies in future.
As per law, discharge of an accused person from a case can occur before charges have been framed. BNSS gave otherwise recommendation, that states that a discharge application can be filed ‘within a period of sixty days from the date of framing of charges.
The Committee has recommended that the term within a period of sixty days from the date of framing of charges should be replaced with within a period of sixty days from the date of supply of documents, this will align the bill with established legal principles.
3.Bharatiya Sakshya Bill
The committee suggested that the use of electronic devices and digital records as evidence may be subjected to a high amount of evidence tampering. So, such evidence when acquired should be carefully handled via a chain of custody with appropriate provisions included in the BNSS.
Written by- Aasmi Abrol, College Name- School of Law, Model Institute of Engineering and Technology, University of Jammu, 3rd Semester, 2nd Year, BBA-LLB (Hons.), An intern under Legal Vidhiya
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