NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Nyaya Sahita (BNS) 2023, which will replace the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, will be implemented from Monday, six months after it was passed in Parliament.
In January, a 14-member committee was constituted to study the laws and prepare the study material for its personnel. It was led by Special Commissioner of Police Chhaya Sharma and comprised DCP Joy Tirkey, Additional DCP Uma Shankar and other officers. The LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual) movement was a recent phenomenon in India’s history, culminating in the historic decriminalisation of Section 377 that gave homosexuality a criminal status. Still, Section 377 was retained in the IPC, criminalising sexual offences against animals, men, and transgenders.
While the new criminal law promises to overhaul the country’s criminal justice system, exclusion of the erstwhile IPC Section 377 which used to deal with carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal i.e. ‘unnatural offence’ might put the victims in a state of helplessness.
However, to find out what the Delhi Police would do with a complaint of sexual assault i.e. sodomy from July 1, this newspaper spoke many IPS officers posted in the Delhi Police to know how they would cater to such complaints of crime which are heinous in nature.
A senior police officer, while speaking to this newspaper, said in such a situation where a man is sodomised or there is a matter of animal cruelty in terms of bestiality, the police will take the victim’s complaint and try to lodge the FIR under sections of hurt.
“There is no relevant provision in the BNS to register a case of unnatural offence or sodomy. Hence, we will find a way to cater to the complaint by registering a case in some relevant sections of hurt,” the officer said. The new criminal law has multiple sections that deal with hurt or assault.
According to sources, a parliamentary panel examining the three criminal justice laws had even highlighted this issue and recommended the re-criminalising of Section 377 under BNS. However, their recommendations were not considered.
A senior Delhi-based lawyer said that the omitting of section 377 from the BNS has created a vacuum in the law.
“The full bench of the apex court had decriminalised the consensual sexual intercourse under section 377 of IPC in Navtej Singh Johar Vs UOI, as long as, the consent must be a free consent, which is completely voluntary in nature, and devoid of any duress or coercion but even after this judgement the provisions of Section 377 of IPC continued to govern non-consensual sexual acts against adults, all acts of carnal intercourse against minors, and acts of beastiality.
The BNS 2023 has gone beyond this judgement by completely deleting this section. Now, there is a vacuum of the acts of bestiality as an offence under BNS, 2023,” Advocate Siddharth Malkania said.
As IPC Section 377 also covered sexual cruelty to animals, now those who commit such acts would also go unprosecuted. The PETA India had also sounded an alarm in this matter and written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December last year.