'No More Tarikh Par Tarikh': How New Criminal Laws Will Improve Things

From filing FIRs from the confines of your home to not waiting for ever to get your FIR registered, the three criminal laws aims to make the life of an ordinary citizen better. With the infusion of technology, the laws aim at easing out the process from filing the FIR to getting the FIR registered. Previously, CRPC did not prescribe any specific time limit for registering FIRs. Now, under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) jail, all FIRs have to be registered within 3 days. For more serious offences, that involve a jail term between 3 years and 7 years, the FIRs have to be registered within two weeks. Giving boost to digitisation, the bills extends its ambit to police stations, prosecution committees, which are all interlinked by new era technology. All databases will be interlinked from fingerfrints to tracking of any crime.

In another sweeping change, the Narendra Modi government had replaced the dreaded Section 124A of the IPC and has replaced it with Section 150 under the new law Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). Under this section, Amit Shah, addressing the Rajya Sabha, said that anyone who criticises the government won't be imprisoned. This is a huge shift from the past where previous governments had imprisoned cartoonists, columnists and artists under the now-repealed sedition law. 

Under the BNS, that replaces IPC, these are the key additions and changes that have been made:

• Broader definition of terrorism - Acts that harm India's unity, integrity, sovereignty, security, economic security
• Mob lynching, for the first time, has been turned into a separate offence, with death penalty as the maximum punishment
• In a transformative change, minor offences will attract ‘community service’ instead of jail term
• ‘Rajdroh’ has been changed to ‘deshdroh’ - This refers to sedition
• Under BNS, it is mandatory to audio-visually record victims of sexually-harassment victims.