Three Newly Enacted Criminal Laws to Come into Effect from July 1, 2024

The newly enacted laws -- the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Act -- to completely overhaul the criminal justice system in the country will come into effect from July 1.

New Delhi: The three newly enacted criminal laws will come into effect from July 1, 2024, the government said in a notification on Saturday. The three laws -- Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which replaces the Indian Penal Code, 1860; the Bharatiya Sakshya (BS), which replaces the Indian Evidence Act, 1872; and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), which replaces the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 -- were notified in the Gazette of India on December 25, 2023.

The three laws got the Parliament's approval on December 21 last year and President Droupadi Murmu gave her assent on December 25. According to three identical notifications issued by the Union Home Ministry, provisions of the new laws will come into force from July 1. The laws will replace the colonial-era Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act of 1872 respectively.

The three legislations aim at completely overhauling the criminal justice system in the country by giving definitions of various offences and their punishments.

In December, during the passage of the bills in the Parliament, Home Minister Amit Shah had said the news laws will bring comprehensive changes to the criminal justice system with a human-centric approach and a focus on imparting justice instead of imposing penalties.

He then said the three bills, which were eventually approved, were drafted after comprehensive consultations and that he had gone through every comma and full stop of the draft legislations before bringing them before the Parliament for approval.

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