By Ahmad Adil
NEW DELHI (AA) – India registered the first cases under new criminal laws that came into effect Monday, replacing British colonial-era legislation.
A case was registered against a street vendor on charges of “obstructing a footover bridge” of New Delhi Railway Station in the capital.
Cases were also registered in other parts of the country.
The new laws with Hindi names, including the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhinayam (BSA), were passed by parliament in December last year but triggered criticism from the opposition as well as lawyers, who had demanded more discussions.
Under the new laws, the government is also empowered to hold “trials in absentia” for alleged offenders living outside India.
If found guilty, their properties can also be attached to by the government.
“There are multiple problems with these new laws. Firstly, they were passed in December 2023 without proper discussion in parliament, while many opposition members were suspended. We support any genuine attempts to decolonize our legal system, but without making the police and security agencies accountable to citizens, there can be no real decolonization,” said Prof. Salim Engineer, vice president of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, an influential Muslim organization.
The Bar Council of Delhi has also written a letter to Home Minister Amit Shah to delay the enforcement of three new criminal laws.
“It is…requested that the date for enforcement of these laws may be deferred and, in the meantime, these laws may be comprehensively discussed to bring amendments to be in consonance with the constitution of India,” the letter said.
Congress lawmaker Manish Tewari said “the new criminal laws lay the foundations of turning India into a police state.”
“Their implementation must be stopped forthwith, and Parliament must re-examine them,” he wrote on X.
Ruling party leaders, however, called the implementation of the new laws a “watershed moment.”
“With this, our Republic has entered into a new system pivoted around modern technology and citizen-centric services. These laws place utmost primacy to the safety of women, children and the underprivileged,” said Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma of northeastern Assam state, which is ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party.