By Adv C K George*
Thrissur, June 30 (IVC) The Indian Penal Code (IPC) passed by the British Parliament in 1 860 by the British Parliament would be ceased to function from July 01, 2024 and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) 2023 would be in vogue in the country since July 2024.
According to senior legal PR actioners like Adv Kaleeswaram Raj, BNS is also not hunky-dory at all. IPC was long overdue for repeal not only of its antiquity and anachronism but of its certain strange sections like 124A (Sedition) and 309 (Attempt to commit suicide). It was only section warranted for punishment in the IPC for one attempting to commit suicide for simple imprisonment for one year or fine or both.
Several years back in the UK the profounder of IPC, attempt to commit suicide was removed from the list of offences and in India is still an offence.
IPC was the only legislation in the whole of the Anglo-Saxon Jurisdiction that it was kept in the cold-storage for 24 years for its enactment. The First Law Commission of India was constituted in 1834 with Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay for preparing a penal code for India.
Macaulay sat for three years behind high walls completely disconnected from the people for whom he was ostensibly working for and created a code of criminal code which was a “body of jurisprudence written for everyone and no one. It had no relationship to previous Indian laws and any other form of Government at all”.
Even the British authorities were uncertain about his efforts and their efficacy and it sat unenacted for long 24 years . Macaulay finished his work on the IPC in 1837 and it was enacted by the British Parliament in 1860. It is still largely in force in all its Victorian glory.
It was said that Macaulay wwas not in talking terms with his wife though they stayed in the same mansion. Certain sections of the IPC had suffered their distance i.e. when his wife passed in front of him that section harsh treatment like Section 309 of the IPC.
The several sections in the IPC , the punishment prescribed was either simple imprisonment or rigorous imprisonment as Macaulay was scrutinizing these section when his wife went in front of him. The Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita 2023 (CrPC) and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam _______________________2023 (Indian Evidence Act) would also be enforced since July 01, 24.
