- India's BNS, BNSS, and BSA came into force on July 1, 2024, replacing laws that dated to 1860, 1872, and 1973 — but the Supreme Court's own procedural rules were still written for the old system.
- Senior Advocate Sidharth Luthra, serving as Amicus Curiae, filed a comprehensive compilation in February 2026 asking the Supreme Court to adopt a fully revised Draft Rules of Criminal Practice framework aligned with the new statutes.
- Only 3 states — Haryana, Assam, and Manipur — have established witness protection schemes as required under Section 398 BNSS; 7 major states remain non-compliant as of July 7, 2026.
- Police custody for serious offences can now extend up to 90 days under BNSS — triple the 15-day ceiling in the old CrPC — a change with direct consequences for anyone arrested under the new regime.
A Two-Year Gap Between Law and Practice
531 sections. That is the size of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita — 47 more than the Code of Criminal Procedure it replaced — yet as of July 7, 2026, India's courts have been applying much of their criminal procedure using rules drafted for a statute that no longer legally exists. A filing by Senior Advocate Sidharth Luthra before the Supreme Court is now pushing to close that gap, according to reporting by LawStreet Journal (originally sourced through Google News).
The three new criminal laws — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA) — came into force on July 1, 2024, replacing the Indian Penal Code (1860), the Code of Criminal Procedure (1973), and the Indian Evidence Act (1872). These are not incremental amendments. The BNS compresses 511 IPC sections into 358. The BSA expands the Evidence Act's 167 sections to 170. The BNSS adds 47 new sections and introduces 145 total procedural timelines — 45 of which are entirely new — with a stated goal of completing the full criminal justice cycle within three years. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court's uniform Draft Rules of Criminal Practice still dated from 2021, written for an architecture the legislature has since demolished. Luthra's February 2026 filing urges the Court to supersede those rules entirely.
The Three Laws in Plain Terms
If you have never tangled with India's criminal justice system, here is the short version: BNS governs what counts as a crime and what punishment follows. BNSS governs how police investigate and how courts run trials. BSA governs what counts as evidence and how it gets admitted. Together, they represent India's most comprehensive criminal justice overhaul since independence — structured as an effort to simultaneously decolonize the law and push it into the digital age.
The changes that touch ordinary people most directly live inside BNSS. The statute now mandates audio-visual documentation of crime scenes, search-and-seizure operations, and statement recordings. Mandatory forensic investigation is required for any offence punishable with seven or more years' imprisonment. Community service appears in Indian criminal law for the first time, available as a penalty for 6 offences and already active in 12 States/UTs. On the technology side, the Union Home Ministry launched four digital applications in 2024 — e-Sakshya, Nyaya Setu, Nyaya Shruti (video conferencing for witness testimony), and e-Summon — to support the new framework. The Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) now connects over 14,000 police stations and 22,000 courts online. Nyaya Shruti has been deployed in 6 States/UTs to date.
What the Compliance Data Actually Shows
The reform's guiding slogan is "Timeline + Tech = Trust" — clear statutory deadlines backed by a digital ecosystem to enforce them. The data on the ground is more complicated. As of July 7, 2026, only 3 states — Haryana, Assam (the first, in 2024), and Manipur — have established witness protection schemes under Section 398 BNSS. Seven states — Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh — remain non-compliant, a gap the amicus flagged directly in the filing. The Supreme Court itself observed in 2024 that witness protection is "being severely hampered nationwide by low resources and poor implementation."
Chart: More than twice as many large Indian states have failed to establish mandatory witness protection schemes as have complied — two years after the new criminal laws took effect.
In my read, the witness protection gap is the most consequential compliance failure in this reform cycle — it is a statutory guarantee that exists for citizens on paper but reaches fewer than a third of India's states two full years after enactment. The implementation picture is uneven elsewhere too: while 23 States/UTs have completed 100% capacity-building training for the new laws, a 22% vacancy rate across police forces and district judiciary posts directly threatens compliance with the new statutory deadlines. India recorded 58.86 lakh cognisable crimes in 2024 — a 6% decline from 62.41 lakh in 2023 — but the judicial backlog remains deep, and hitting the three-year trial target will strain a system already running short on personnel.
Luthra's proposed revised rules address the procedural side of this dysfunction. The 2026 draft framework calls for time-bound charge framing within 60 days from the first hearing, standardized paragraph-numbered depositions for evidence recording, and witness-linked exhibit systems to eliminate the loose "omnibus marking" of documents that has long slowed Indian trials. The statute reads well; the question is whether revised rules can drive state courts to actually apply it.
Where Legal Technology Fits Into This Picture
The BNSS's audio-visual documentation mandate is not merely a procedural upgrade — it is the foundation for an AI-driven evidentiary ecosystem. Every mandatory video recording of a crime scene, every electronic FIR, every digitized court record creates structured data that legal technology systems can analyze at scale. The BSA formally recognizes electronic records as primary evidence, a statutory shift that removes a historical barrier to AI legal tools doing what they do best: pattern-matching across large document sets, flagging statement inconsistencies, and accelerating case review.
For practitioners and legal software vendors operating in the Indian market, the BSA's expanded digital evidence rules create both opportunity and compliance obligations — particularly around chain-of-custody documentation for electronic records. Law firm automation tools calibrated to the old evidentiary framework need recalibration for a world where a video from a constable's phone is primary evidence and a paper record is the fallback. The digital pipes already exist: CCTNS connects 14,000+ police stations and 22,000 courts. The rules Luthra is pushing the Supreme Court to adopt are, in part, about ensuring the legal scaffolding matches the infrastructure that is already live.
What This Means If You Are Navigating the System
Under the old CrPC, police custody was hard-capped at 15 days. Under BNSS, for offences carrying 10 or more years' imprisonment, that window extends to 90 days — a tripling of the maximum exposure. A court would likely look at the specific BNS offence classification first to determine which custody rule applies. If you or someone you know is arrested, securing a criminal defense lawyer familiar with BNSS provisions — not just legacy CrPC practice — matters from the first hour.
The BSA has elevated digital records to primary evidence status. This cuts both ways: video documentation can protect citizens against false official accounts, but it also means your own electronic trail — messages, emails, location data — enters evidence more cleanly than before. In any situation that touches criminal law, preserve digital records carefully and assume they are discoverable.
Before you sign anything or make decisions based on rights the new laws promise, verify your state's compliance status. If you live in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, or Chhattisgarh — the seven states flagged in Luthra's filing — court-mandated witness protection mechanisms may not yet be operational. The statute grants rights; state implementation delivers them. Those are not the same thing right now.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is BNSS and how is it actually different from the old CrPC?
The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) on July 1, 2024. The CrPC had 484 sections; BNSS has 531. Core practical differences include: police custody extended to up to 90 days for serious offences (vs. 15 days under CrPC), mandatory audio-visual investigation documentation, 145 codified procedural timelines to compress trial length, and a stated three-year target for completing the full criminal justice process. The BNSS also introduces forensic investigation mandates and technology-first evidence recording requirements that had no equivalent in the old code.
When did India's BNS, BNSS, and BSA come into effect — and were they phased in?
All three laws came into force simultaneously on July 1, 2024. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) replaced the Indian Penal Code, the BNSS replaced the CrPC, and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA) replaced the Indian Evidence Act of 1872. The core statutes were not phased — they replaced their predecessors in a single cutover. However, specific provisions requiring state action (such as Section 398 BNSS on witness protection schemes) have seen highly uneven implementation across states in the two years since.
Which states have set up witness protection schemes under Section 398 BNSS — and which haven't as of mid-2026?
As of July 7, 2026, only three states have established witness protection schemes under Section 398 BNSS: Haryana, Assam (the first to do so, in 2024), and Manipur. Seven states remain non-compliant: Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh. The Supreme Court noted in 2024 that the schemes are "being severely hampered nationwide by low resources and poor implementation," and the amicus curiae filing by Senior Advocate Sidharth Luthra specifically flagged this gap before the Court.
Does the 90-day police custody rule under BNSS apply to every criminal case in India?
No. The extended 90-day police custody window applies specifically to offences punishable with 10 or more years' imprisonment under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). For lesser offences, standard custody timelines continue to apply. Because the BNS has restructured and renumbered offences compared to the old IPC — compressing 511 sections into 358 — identifying the correct custody rule for a specific situation requires checking the BNS classification directly. A lawyer familiar with BNSS, not just legacy CrPC practice, is essential for navigating this correctly.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice or professional counsel. Laws and their implementation vary by jurisdiction and individual circumstance. Readers should consult a qualified legal professional for guidance specific to their situation. Research based on publicly available sources current as of July 7, 2026.