Effective July 1, 2024, the Government of India revamped statutes governing the criminal jurisprudence in Bharat by promulgating the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023; Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023; and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 to replace the colonial-era Indian Penal Code 1890, Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 and Indian Evidence Act, 1872.

Notwithstanding the promulgation of new statutes, I submit that the criminal justice system in Bharat is broken beyond redemption, and it is getting late to introduce reforms to reduce the trust deficit of ordinary Bharatiyas in the various organs of the system of criminal jurisprudence.

How to mend the system lies at the core of the deep dive in this series.

The key objective of the Criminal Justice System must be to provide a maximum sense of security to ordinary Bharatiyas by dealing with crimes and criminals effectively, quickly and legally. Here are the key objectives in brief:

The efficacy of the criminal justice system must be viewed from the prism of fast-increasing crime in Bharat since Independence. It is instructive to note that between 1953 and 2023, the Indian population grew 3.82 times but during the same period, cognisable crime skyrocketed around 10 times. Here is the breakdown analysis of the trend of crime:

Ironically, the birth rate of crime is increasing at a breakneck speed, but its death rate is not even noticeable.

Two key reasons for the unrelented growth of crime are:

One, the unfortunate strong link between the criminals and the so-called law officers and

Two, the complete collapse of the principal branches of criminal jurisprudence – statutes, police, prosecution, prison, and judiciary.

I will return to it sooner. For the moment, it suffices to quote what Martin Luther King Jr. once said famously, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Admittedly, in the past decade, cognisable offences per 100,000 population have dipped marginally and a part of the increase in crime is attributable to newer offences, nonetheless, the statistics annually presented by the NCRB at best are half-truths. Here are the reasons for my assertion:

1. Unreliable: The crime statistics reported by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) are unreliable. It merely collates data received from the state police without verifying it.

2. Non-reporting: The fear of police is so deeply ingrained that a large number of crimes committed — particularly against the poor — are not reported to the police resulting in non-reporting and underreporting.

3. Burking: “Burking of crimes" refers to a practice where police intentionally avoid registering First Information Reports (FIR). Poor victims suffer due to burking whereas the well-connected criminals are the beneficiaries of the burking of crimes.

4. Principal Offence Rule: Under this rule, when a single incident involves multiple offences, only the most serious or “principal" offence is considered for criminal statistics and reporting purposes. This distorts the reported crime data.

The irony is the crime rate reported is only the tip of the iceberg. One does not know how many crimes occur daily across various categories in Bharat and quite clearly one cannot prevent, control or reduce a crime whose occurrence is neither known nor counted or reported properly.

The criminal justice system in Bharat is complicated because, in Schedule 7 of the Constitution, the subjects of “police, prosecution, public order and prison" are listed in List II – the State List.

Obviously,........

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