NEW DELHI: Indian Congress has accused Union home minister Amit Shah of attempting to change India’s criminal law structure in a “clandestine, hidden and opaque manner”.
In a statement, Congress general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Randeep Singh Surjewala said Shah had sought to lie and mislead the parliament by claiming that punishments for mob lynching and hate speech had been added to the new bill, reported Deccan Herald.
Already the government’s move to replace the three existing colonial-era criminal law codes with three new Bills is facing criticism from opposition parties due to the fact that the new Bills have Hindi names.
The three new bills are the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Bill, 2023, which will replace the Indian Penal Code, 1860; the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita Bill, 2023 which will replace the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898; and the Bharatiya Sakshya Bill, 2023 which will replace the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.
Earlier, Shah said in parliament that the government will “repeal sedition completely,” only the word has been removed, not the law.
Surjewala has said that mob lynching was earlier covered under Section 302 (murder) of IPC in which death penalty or life imprisonment were the punishments. Now, Surjewala said, Shah’s government was giving huge “concessions” to those accused of lynching by watering down the lowest punishment to seven years.
Surjewala also said that Shah’s claim in parliament that hate speech would be penalised under the new Bills is also false as there were provisions in the IPC under which it was already covered.
Surjewala, according to the Deccan Herald report, also alleged that Shah “lied [to] and misled” the parliament on ‘zero FIRs’ and ‘e-FIRs’, both of which were launched by the United Progressive Alliance government under Dr Manmohan Singh, he said.
He also said that the mandatory video recording of a rape victim’s statement has now been made optional under the changes introduced by Shah.
Surjewala also said that punishment for terrorist acts and other crimes were also falsely advertised by Shah in parliament.
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