New Laws: Justice Delivered or Delayed?

July 1, 2025, marks the first anniversary of a monumental undertaking in India’s legal history: the nationwide implementation of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA). This sweeping overhaul of the country's criminal justice framework was launched with a powerful and ambitious vision. It was presented as a definitive break from a colonial past, designed to decolonize the legal system and inaugurate a new era of swift, accessible, and citizen-centric justice. The stated legislative intent was to shift the system’s focus from mere punishment to the delivery of holistic Nyaya (justice). 

One year into this transformative project, however, the Indian legal system finds itself grappling with a profound and growing paradox. A dangerous disconnect has emerged between the government's top-down, centralized vision for a modern, efficient system and the harsh, under-resourced reality of the implementation of machinery on the ground. The noble aspirations of speed, clarity, and accountability are colliding with the immovable objects of judicial vacancies, collapsing forensic infrastructure, and a deep digital divide. This editorial moves beyond a simple assessment of the new codes to ask a more critical and urgent question: Are these reforms, despite their laudable intentions, at risk of becoming self-defeating? By imposing a 21st-century procedural superstructure onto a mid-20th-century institutional foundation, are these laws inadvertently creating more complexity, confusion, and delay than they sought to eliminate? The future of India’s justice revolution now depends on confronting this paradox head-on. 

On the anniversary of the codes, the government’s narrative has been one of unqualified success and historic achievement. Through a series of high-profile pronouncements, the administration has framed the BNS, BNSS, and BSA as a landmark accomplishment that fundamentally reshapes the nation’s approach to criminal justice. This narrative is built on two powerful pillars: a philosophical shift towards decolonization and a practical promise of technologically driven efficiency. 

The dominant theme is decolonization. Officials have repeatedly asserted that the old laws, like the Indian Penal Code, were designed to protect the British regime and instill fear in the populace. In contrast, the new codes are presented as being grounded in an Indian ethos that prioritizes "justice over punishment". This, it is argued, marks a seismic shift towards a system created "for the people of India" by their own elected representatives. This philosophical repositioning is coupled with the promise of citizen-centricity. Provisions such as Zero FIR (allowing a complaint to be filed at any police station), the ability to file complaints online, and the use of electronic summons are highlighted as measures to make the system more "affordable, accessible, and approachable" for the average citizen. The stated goal is to replace the public’s fear of the police with a newfound confidence that lodging a complaint will lead to prompt justice. 

This vision culminates in the administration's most ambitious and widely publicized promise: a radical reduction in the time taken for justice delivery. The government has repeatedly assured the nation that, powered by new technology-driven processes, "justice up to the Supreme Court will be delivered within three years of filing an FIR." This bold timeline has become the ultimate metric of reform success, a promise of a future where justice is not a theoretical right but a time-bound reality. 

To substantiate these claims, the government has pointed to a massive nationwide effort in capacity building and technological integration. Official data highlights an extensive training exercise for "approximately 14.8 lakh policemen, 42,000 jail employees, over 19,000 judicial officers, and more than 11,000 public prosecutors". This has been accompanied by the rollout of a suite of digital platforms intended to form the technological backbone of the reformed system. Key among these is the Inter-Operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS), designed to seamlessly integrate the IT systems of police, courts, jails, forensics, and prosecution, and the e-Sakshya app, a mobile application for investigating officers to collect real-time, geotagged audio-visual evidence. 

The official narrative is thus one of comprehensive, determined, and successful actions. It presents a picture of a system being fundamentally re-engineered through enlightened legislation, extensive training, and cutting-edge technology. However, this narrative, focused on the inputs of reform, stands in stark contrast to the outcomes being witnessed as the laws are tested in the real world. 

While the executive branch celebrated a year of progress, the judicial system became the first true crucible for the new codes. In courtrooms across the country, the ambitious theory of the laws collided with the complex reality of their application. This collision has exposed deep structural fissures in the implementation ecosystem, revealing that the vision is faltering against three major obstacles: legal confusion, a crippling manpower crisis, and a severe infrastructure bottleneck. 

A reform intended to bring clarity has, ironically, introduced new layers of legal uncertainty. The most immediate and widespread challenge has been the question of retrospective applicability. For thousands of criminal cases where the offense occurred before July 1, 2024, but where the investigation or trial continued past this date, a fundamental confusion arose: do the old codes or the new codes apply? This is not a minor technicality; it goes to the heart of an accused person's constitutional rights and has created significant delays. 

Following a series of conflicting rulings, the Supreme Court has clarified that the substantive penal provisions of the BNS cannot be applied retrospectively, as Article 20(1) of the Constitution protects individuals from being punished under a law that was not in force at the time of the act. However, the judiciary also ruled that purely procedural aspects of the new BNSS and evidentiary rules of the BSA may apply to ongoing cases. This has created a bifurcated system where judges, lawyers, and police must navigate two different legal regimes within a single case. The ultimate irony is that a reform designed to speed up justice has birthed an entirely new category of preliminary litigation, forcing courts to spend precious time first deciding which set of laws to apply before they can even begin to address the merits of the case. 

Further confusion has emerged from drafting ambiguities in the new evidence act, the BSA. The act uses the terms "digital records" and "electronic records" without clearly defining the distinction between them. This has created a procedural minefield. Trial courts are now grappling with whether a piece of evidence like a WhatsApp message requires a stringent certificate for admissibility, a process that has been made even more difficult by a new provision that appears to require certification from both the device owner and a non-existent panel of government-notified experts. This ambiguity has armed litigants with new tools to bog down trials in procedural challenges, shifting the focus from the substance of the evidence to technicalities of its submission. 

The promise of delivering justice within three years is fundamentally dependent on having enough people to administer it. Here, the government’s vision collides with the immovable wall of a justice system running empty. No amount of legislative reform can accelerate justice when there are simply not enough hands-on deck. 

The most recent India Justice Report (IJR) 2025 paints a grim picture. Across the country, state police forces are operating with an overall vacancy rate of approximately 22%. This translates to a dangerously overstretched force, with only 155 police officers per one lakh citizens—far below the sanctioned strength. The situation in the judiciary is just as alarming. The IJR 2025 reveals that vacancies in the district judiciary stand at a critical 21%, while in the High Courts, a staggering 33% of judge positions remain unfilled. With over 5 crore cases already pending and only 15 judges for every 10-lakh people, the system is structurally incapable of meeting the demanding new timelines set by the law. The promise of speed is an illusion when the human infrastructure required to achieve it is missing by a margin of nearly one in four or one in five positions across the board. 

A cornerstone of the new legal framework is the mandate for compulsory forensic investigation for all crimes punishable with seven years or more of imprisonment. This is a laudable goal, intended to usher in an era of scientific investigation and improve the quality of evidence. However, this mandate has been imposed on a forensic infrastructure that is in a state of near collapse. 

Across India, Forensic Science Laboratories (FSLs) are crippled by a nationwide staff vacancy rate of over 40%. In some critical state labs, the vacancy rate is as high as 73%. This crisis is compounded by chronic underfunding and infrastructural neglect. As a result, a provision designed to improve evidence and speed up convictions is set to become a massive institutional bottleneck. Investigations will inevitably be held up for months, or even years, while awaiting forensic reports from labs that are already overwhelmed. This turns a measure for better evidence into a primary source of systemic delay. 

This is mirrored by a pervasive "digital chasm." The new codes envision a fully digitized system, but many police stations, particularly in rural areas, lack the most necessities like reliable computers, scanners, and stable internet connectivity. This makes compliance with mandates for the videography of searches or the use of apps like e-Sakshya practically impossible. When an officer cannot upload evidence from a crime scene due to poor connectivity, the chain of custody is compromised, and the evidence can be rendered inadmissible in court. This creates a perilous situation where a case can fail not due to investigative flaws, but because the state failed to provide its own officers with the basic tools mandated by its own laws. 

The evidence from the first year of the new codes points to a deep and troubling paradox: a legislative project designed to simplify is breeding complexity, a push for speed is creating new sources of delay, and a mandate for accountability is being undermined by the state's own incapacity. This is not a matter of minor "teething problems" but points to a fundamental structural flaw in the sequencing of the reform itself. 

The laws designed for speed are creating new delays. The confusion over the retrospective application of the codes has introduced a new form of preliminary litigation that stalls trials. The mandate for compulsory forensic investigation, when imposed on collapsing FSLs, does not accelerate justice; it institutionalizes a massive bottleneck that will delay investigations for years. 

The laws designed for clarity are causing new ambiguity. The poorly drafted distinction between "digital" and "electronic" records in the BSA has not created a clear and predictable evidence regime. Instead, it has created a procedural minefield, inviting endless challenges to the admissibility of crucial digital evidence and forcing the judiciary to spend years providing the clarity that the legislature failed to deliver. 

The laws mandating accountability are failing because of systemic incapacity. The requirement for videography of seizures or the use of evidence-collection apps is rendered hollow when police stations lack working cameras or stable internet. This creates a system of "accountability in theory, but impunity in practice," where the state legislates standards that its own machinery is incapable of meeting. 

These failures point to a single, core flaw: the government put the cart before the horse. The legal superstructure was erected before the institutional foundation was strengthened. An ambitious legal code was enacted without a corresponding, fully funded, and time-bound plan to first build the capacity of the system that must execute it. Consequently, a reform born of a desire to fix a broken system now risks breaking it further. 

One year on, India's new criminal codes stand at a precarious crossroads. The legislative ambition to create a decolonized and efficient justice system is both commendable and necessary. However, this vision is being severely undermined by the cavernous gap between the text of the law and the reality of the nation's under-resourced police stations, forensic labs, and courtrooms. The path forward does not lie in repealing the laws, but in harnessing the momentum for reform constructively. The challenge now is to shift the national focus from the text of the law to building the system that executes it. 

This requires a concrete, multi-pronged strategy to empower the justice system from the ground up. A credible roadmap must be built on three pillars: 

1. A National Mission for Justice Sector Recruitment: The single greatest impediment to speedy justice is the chronic shortage of personnel. The government must launch a time-bound, mission-mode plan to fill all existing vacancies in the district judiciary, state police forces, and public prosecution offices within a fixed and publicly monitored timeframe. No procedural reform can succeed as long as the system operates with a fraction of its sanctioned strength. 

2. A Criminal Justice Modernization Fund: The digital and forensic mandates of the new codes are meaningless without the tools to implement them. A dedicated, non-lapsable "Criminal Justice Modernization Fund," jointly financed by the Centre and states, must be established. This fund must be ring-fenced to modernize and fully staff every Forensic Science Lab and to ensure every police station and trial court is equipped with the basic digital tools—computers, cameras, and reliable internet—needed to comply with the new procedural laws. 

3. An Independent Review Body: Legal reform is a dynamic process that requires continuous adaptation. A permanent, independent body comprising judges, police officers, prosecutors, forensic experts, and legal academics should be established. Its mandate would be to continuously monitor implementation, identify practical hurdles and drafting ambiguities in real-time, and recommend necessary adjustments to the government and judiciary, creating a vital feedback loop for continuous improvement. 

The true test of this reform is not what was written in the halls of Parliament in 2023, but what is funded, built, and staffed in the nation's police stations, labs, and courtrooms from 2025 onwards. Without a foundational investment in the people and tools that deliver justice, India's "justice revolution" will remain confined to the pages of the statute book a vision admired, but a reality unattained for the common citizen.