BNSS 2023 Introduction Salient Features Structure and Commencement

Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023: Introduction, Salient Features, Structure and Commencement of India’s New Criminal Procedure Code

The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 is the law that governs how a criminal case in India is begun, investigated, tried, decided and enforced. It is Act 46 of 2023, it received the assent of the President on 25 December 2023, and it came into force on 1 July 2024, on which date the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 stood repealed. Every criminal proceeding that begins today, from the first information given at a police station to the execution of a sentence, is regulated by this Sanhita.

The Sanhita is not a fresh draft of Indian criminal procedure. It retains the architecture, the sequence and most of the language of the 1973 Code, renumbers every section, and lays six new layers over the old structure: technology, statutory timelines, forensic investigation, victim and witness entitlements, new powers of trial and attachment, and institutional accountability. Understanding the BNSS therefore means understanding both what was kept and what was added.

Figure 1: The three criminal law statutes of 2023 and the division of labour between them

1. What the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita Is

Criminal law in India is divided between three statutes, and the Sanhita occupies the middle position. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 says what conduct is an offence and what punishment it attracts. The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 says what may be proved before a court and how. The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 supplies the machinery that connects the two. It tells the police what they may do, tells the courts how to proceed, and tells the accused and the victim what they are entitled to at each stage.

The relationship is not merely sequential. A right or a liability declared by substantive law is worth only as much as the procedure available to enforce it, and a rule of evidence has no operation until a proceeding exists in which it can be applied. The Sanhita is what converts the other two statutes from declarations into working law.

1.1 The name and what it signals

The expression Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita translates as a code for the protection of the citizen. The 1973 enactment was called a Code of Criminal Procedure, describing the process; the 2023 enactment is named for the person the process is said to serve. The change of name accompanies the declared object of the reform, which was a system oriented towards the delivery of justice rather than the infliction of punishment, and it is the interpretive background against which the victim-facing and time-bound provisions are read.

1.2 The three statutes compared

The three must be read together in practice. A charge is framed for an offence under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita but by the procedure in Chapter XVIII of the Sanhita; a confession is recorded under section 183 of the Sanhita but its admissibility is governed by the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam. Because the repealed statutes continue to govern old matters for years, both sets of section numbers remain in active use.

2. Enactment, Commencement and Extent

2.1 Legislative history

2.2 Section 1: short title, extent and commencement

2.3 The Nagaland and tribal areas exception

The three chapters that apply everywhere of their own force are Chapter IX on security for keeping the peace and for good behaviour, Chapter XI on the maintenance of public order and tranquillity, and Chapter XII on preventive action of the police. These correspond to Chapters VIII, X and XI of the 1973 Code, which carried an identical exception. The effect is that the preventive and public-order machinery extends throughout India, while the investigative and trial machinery reaches the excepted areas only as and to the extent that the State Government notifies it, and the notification may itself carry modifications.

3. The Structure of the Sanhita

The Sanhita contains 531 sections arranged in 39 chapters, with two Schedules. The 1973 Code had 484 sections in 37 chapters and two Schedules. The increase is modest, and that is the most important structural fact about the enactment: it did not rewrite Indian criminal procedure from first principles.

3.1 Structural comparison with the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973

Government statements accompanying the Bills described the exercise as the modification of roughly one hundred and seventy-seven provisions, the addition of nine new sections and a number of new sub-sections and provisos, and the deletion of fourteen. Secondary sources differ on the arithmetic, because the count depends on whether provisos, Explanations and sub-sections are treated as separate provisions. What is not disputed is that the great bulk of the 1973 Code survives in the Sanhita in substance.

3.2 The two Schedules

• The First Schedule classifies offences. For each offence under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita it states whether the offence is cognizable or non-cognizable, bailable or non-bailable, the punishment, and the court by which it is triable. A second part does the same for offences under other laws by reference to the length of the punishment. The Schedule is not a drafting appendix: the definitions of cognizable offence in section 2(1)(g) and bailable offence in section 2(1)(c) operate by reference to it, so the Schedule is what gives those definitions content.
• The Second Schedule contains the statutory forms, including the forms of summons, warrant of arrest, proclamation, bond and bail bond, and warrant of commitment. Section 522 provides that the forms in the Second Schedule, with such variation as the circumstances require, may be used for the respective purposes mentioned in them.

4. Salient Features of the BNSS, 2023

The genuinely new material in the Sanhita clusters in six areas. Each is examined in detail later in this series; what follows identifies them and anchors each to its section.

Figure 2: What the Sanhita retained from the 1973 Code and the six layers it added

4.1 Technology in investigation and trial

Two definitions carry the electronic provisions of the Sanhita. Section 2(1)(a) defines audio-video electronic means to include any communication device used for video conferencing, for recording the processes of identification, search and seizure or evidence, and for the transmission of electronic communication. Section 2(1)(i) defines electronic communication as the communication of written, verbal, pictorial information or video content transmitted by an electronic device. Section 2(2) imports the vocabulary of the Information Technology Act, 2000 for expressions not otherwise defined.

4.2 Statutory timelines

The most systematic change in the Sanhita is the attachment of an outer limit to steps that the 1973 Code left open-ended. The timelines are not all of the same character. Some are directory in form, some are expressed with a power of extension for reasons recorded, and none is accompanied by an express consequence of breach, which is where the litigation on this subject is expected to develop.

4.3 Forensic investigation

Section 176(3) requires that where an offence is punishable with imprisonment of seven years or more, a forensic expert shall visit the scene of the offence to collect forensic evidence and shall cause the process to be videographed. Where a State has no forensic facility, it is to utilise the facility of another State. A proviso allowed the States five years from commencement to put the necessary facilities in place, which is why the provision has a phased practical effect even though it is in force.

4.4 Victim and witness entitlements

• Section 173(1) permits information about a cognizable offence to be given at any police station irrespective of the area in which the offence is committed, giving statutory form to the Zero FIR, and permits information to be given by electronic communication.
• Section 193(3)(ii) requires the police to inform the informant or victim of the progress of the investigation within ninety days, including by electronic communication.
• Section 360 prohibits withdrawal from prosecution without giving the victim an opportunity of being heard, where the offence is one to which that provision applies.
• Sections 395 and 396 provide for an order to pay compensation and for the victim compensation scheme to be prepared by the State Government in coordination with the Central Government.
• Section 397 requires the free first-aid or medical treatment of victims of specified offences at all hospitals.
• Section 398 requires every State Government to prepare and notify a witness protection scheme, a subject previously governed by judicial direction rather than statute.

4.5 Arrest, custody and the rights of the accused

4.6 New powers and procedures

• Trial in absentia of a proclaimed offender. Section 356 permits an inquiry, trial or judgment in the absence of a proclaimed offender who has absconded to evade trial and whose immediate arrest is not feasible, subject to a procedure of notice, publication and the appointment of an advocate at State expense. The 1973 Code contained no such power.
• Attachment of the proceeds of crime. Section 107 empowers a police officer, with the approval of a superior officer, to apply to the court for the attachment of property believed to be derived from criminal activity, and the court to order attachment and distribution to the affected persons.
• Community service as a sentence. Section 23 empowers a Magistrate of the first class and of the second class to award community service, and the Explanation defines it as work the court may order a convict to perform for the benefit of the community, for which he is not entitled to remuneration.
• A cap on consecutive sentences. The proviso to section 25 provides that in no case shall a person be sentenced to imprisonment for a longer period than twenty years where consecutive sentences are ordered, and that the aggregate must not exceed twice the punishment the court is competent to inflict for a single offence.
• Voice samples. Section 349 extends the power of a Magistrate to order a person to give specimen signatures or handwriting so as to cover finger impressions and voice samples, with a proviso requiring that the person has been arrested in connection with the case.

4.7 Institutional accountability

• Section 20 establishes a Directorate of Prosecution at the State level and a District Directorate, prescribes qualifications, and allocates monitoring functions by the gravity of the offence: the Director monitors cases punishable with ten years or more, life imprisonment or death; the Deputy Director those punishable with seven years or more but less than ten; and the Assistant Director those punishable with less than seven years.
• Section 529 casts a duty on every High Court to exercise continuous superintendence over the courts subordinate to it, to ensure that there is no undue delay in the disposal of cases.
• Section 194 and section 196 require inquiry and reporting on unnatural and custodial deaths, with section 196(3) requiring a magisterial inquiry where a person dies or disappears or a woman is raped while in the custody of the police.

5. How a Criminal Case Moves Through the Sanhita

The 39 chapters are arranged in the order in which a criminal case actually proceeds. Locating a provision is therefore a matter of asking at which stage of the case the question arises.

Figure 3: The stages of a criminal case under the BNSS, 2023, with the governing chapters and sections

6. The Constitutional Foundation of Criminal Procedure

Procedural law is sometimes treated as a set of formalities subordinate to the substantive law it serves. Indian constitutional jurisprudence has moved decisively away from that view. Article 21 protects life and personal liberty against deprivation otherwise than according to procedure established by law, and since 1978 that procedure has had to be right, just and fair rather than merely enacted. Article 22 fixes the conditions of arrest and detention, including production before a Magistrate within twenty-four hours. Article 20(3) protects against compelled self-incrimination. Article 39A directs the State to secure equal justice and free legal aid. A breach of the Sanhita is therefore frequently also a constitutional grievance.

The statutory timelines in the Sanhita, the duty of continuous superintendence in section 529 and the limit on adjournments in section 346 are the legislative response to the problem this line of cases identified. The second decision below concerns the very first act in the procedural chain, and is the clearest instance of the Sanhita departing from a settled judicial position.

Section 173(3) of the Sanhita now permits an officer in charge of a police station, on receiving information relating to a cognizable offence punishable with three years or more but less than seven years, to conduct a preliminary inquiry with the prior permission of an officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police, to ascertain whether a prima facie case exists, and requires that inquiry to be completed within fourteen days. The statutory position and the position taken by the Constitution Bench therefore now differ for that band of offences. Whether section 173(3) is read as a legislative displacement of Lalita Kumari for that band, or as subject to the constitutional reasoning on which that decision rests, is among the principal open questions under the Sanhita.

7. Continuity, Criticism and the Open Questions

Two competing assessments of the Sanhita are made, and both have force. The first is that the enactment modernises a colonial instrument, brings technology and forensic science into the ordinary criminal process, attaches accountability to timelines and gives the victim a defined place in the proceeding. The second is that the greater part of the text is the 1973 Code renumbered, that the renumbering imposes a substantial transitional cost on courts, police and litigants for limited gain, and that several of the new provisions enlarge the powers of the investigating agency.

The criticisms most frequently made concern the extension of the window for police custody under section 187, which permits fifteen days of police custody to be sought in parts within the first forty or sixty days rather than only within the first fifteen; the preliminary inquiry under section 173(3) and its relationship with Lalita Kumari; the power of attachment of property under section 107 before any trial; and the exclusion under section 479(1) of certain categories of undertrial from the benefit of release. The Sanhita has been in force only since July 2024, and the authoritative resolution of these questions is still being worked out by the High Courts and the Supreme Court.

8. The Transition from the CrPC, 1973

Section 531(1) repeals the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. Section 531(2)(a) provides that notwithstanding the repeal, any appeal, application, trial, inquiry or investigation pending immediately before 1 July 2024 shall be disposed of, continued, held or made in accordance with the 1973 Code, as if the Sanhita had not come into force. Other clauses preserve the validity of notifications, appointments, local jurisdictions, sanctions, consents, rules and bonds made under the repealed Code and treat them as made under the corresponding provisions of the Sanhita.

Two consequences follow. The two procedural codes run in parallel for years: a first information report registered on 30 June 2024 carries the 1973 Code with it through investigation and trial, while one registered a day later is governed by the Sanhita. And the boundary generates litigation of its own. The High Courts have converged on the propositions that no fresh petition may be filed under the repealed Code on or after 1 July 2024, and that a matter pending on that date continues under the old Code, but have differed on whether a petition or appeal filed after the commencement date in relation to an investigation begun before it is a fresh proceeding or a continuation of the saved one. The practical method is to identify precisely what was pending on 30 June 2024 and to ask whether the step now proposed forms part of that same proceeding.

9. Key Takeaways

10. Frequently Asked Questions

What is the full form and meaning of BNSS?

BNSS stands for the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which translates as the Indian code for the protection of the citizen. It is the criminal procedure statute that replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 with effect from 1 July 2024.

How many sections and chapters does the BNSS, 2023 have?

The Sanhita has 531 sections in 39 chapters, together with two Schedules. The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 had 484 sections in 37 chapters.

When did the BNSS come into force?

On 1 July 2024, appointed by notification S.O. 848(E) dated 23 February 2024 under section 1(3), except the entry in the First Schedule relating to section 106(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.

Does the BNSS apply to a case registered before 1 July 2024?

No. Section 531(2)(a) saves every appeal, application, trial, inquiry and investigation pending immediately before that date, and such a matter continues under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 as if the Sanhita had not come into force.

What is the difference between the BNS, the BNSS and the BSA?

The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita defines offences and punishments and replaces the Indian Penal Code, 1860. The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita lays down the procedure of investigation and trial and replaces the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam governs the law of evidence and replaces the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.

Which are the most important new provisions of the BNSS?

Section 173 on the Zero FIR and electronic first information, section 176(3) on mandatory forensic investigation for offences punishable with seven years or more, section 187 on police custody, section 193 on the ninety-day progress report to the victim, section 356 on trial in absentia of a proclaimed offender, section 479 on the release of undertrial prisoners, and section 530 on proceedings in electronic mode.

Related Topics

• History and Evolution of Criminal Procedure in India
• Object, Scope and Scheme of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023
• Definitions under Section 2 of the BNSS, 2023
• Repeal and Savings: Section 531 and the Transition from the CrPC, 1973
• Information in Cognizable Cases: Section 173, Zero FIR and e-FIR
• Arrest under the BNSS, 2023: Sections 35 to 62