TL;DR: On 1 July 2024, three new codes — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA) — replaced the IPC, CrPC, and Indian Evidence Act. The transition is a major relearning exercise. AI can help lawyers map old sections to new, research under the new codes, and update templates — but every output must be verified against primary sources. This is general information, not legal advice.
India's criminal justice framework was rebuilt in 2024. The Indian Penal Code of 1860, the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1973, and the Indian Evidence Act of 1872 — statutes that shaped Indian practice for generations — were replaced by three new codes. For practitioners, the change is not cosmetic: section numbers, terminology, and some substantive and procedural provisions have moved. This article explains the shape of the change and how AI can ease the transition, with a strong caveat about verification.
What changed on 1 July 2024?
From 1 July 2024, the three new codes came into force, applying to offences and proceedings as provided in their respective transitional arrangements. Older matters and the precedent built over more than a century do not simply disappear, which is precisely what makes this period complex: practitioners must work fluently across both the old and new frameworks, knowing which applies to a given matter and how the two relate. Independent analysis of the legislation, including the parliamentary process, is available from research bodies such as PRS Legislative Research, and the official texts are on India Code.
The practical footprint of the change is large. Cause titles, FIR and charge documents, standard pleadings, internal checklists, and even the muscle memory of citing a familiar section number all have to be revisited. For a profession that runs on precise references to provisions, a comprehensive renumbering is not a trivial inconvenience; it is a sustained source of friction until practitioners, registries, and software have all caught up. That is the practical problem this article is really about: how to work accurately across two frameworks during a long transition.
How are the three new codes structured?
Each new code corresponds to one of the old statutes, though the correspondence is not always clause-for-clause.
Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (replaces the IPC)
The BNS is the substantive criminal law — the catalogue of offences and punishments that replaces the Indian Penal Code. It reorganizes and renumbers offences, consolidates some provisions, and introduces changes in certain areas. Because the numbering has changed comprehensively, a section number a lawyer has used for years will usually point somewhere new under the BNS.
Some changes are more than cosmetic. The reorganization gathers certain offences together, revisits punishments in places, and introduces provisions in areas the older code did not address in the same way. Because of this, a lawyer cannot assume that an old offence maps cleanly to a single new section with identical ingredients; the safer assumption is that each provision needs to be read afresh in its new setting.
Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (replaces the CrPC)
The BNSS is the procedural code governing investigation, arrest, bail, trial, and related steps, replacing the Code of Criminal Procedure. Documents such as chargesheets are now filed under the BNSS, so practice templates and checklists that referenced CrPC provisions need to be updated.
Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (replaces the Evidence Act)
The BSA governs evidence — relevance, admissibility, witnesses, and proof — replacing the Indian Evidence Act, with updated treatment of areas including electronic and digital records. As with the other codes, provisions have been renumbered and reorganized.
For practitioners, the evidence rules are where some of the most consequential day-to-day questions arise — what can be produced, how electronic records are proved, and how documents are admitted. Because these mechanics have been restated in a new structure, it is worth re-reading the relevant provisions directly rather than relying on habits formed under the old Act, particularly in matters that turn on digital evidence.
Old codes to new codes: an illustrative map
The table below maps the old statutes to the new codes at the framework level. It is illustrative only. Section-level correspondences in particular vary, and some provisions have changed in substance, so every mapping must be verified against the official text before you rely on it.
| Old statute | New code (2023, in force 1 July 2024) | Subject matter |
|---|---|---|
| Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC) | Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS) | Substantive offences and punishments |
| Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC) | Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS) | Criminal procedure: investigation, arrest, bail, trial |
| Indian Evidence Act, 1872 | Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA) | Law of evidence: relevance, admissibility, proof |
Resist the temptation to memorize a quick section-to-section cheat sheet from secondary sources without checking. The reliable workflow is to confirm each provision against the primary text, and to treat any AI-generated mapping as a draft to verify, never as an authority.
The reason for this caution is structural. The new codes were not produced simply by renumbering the old ones; they reorganize material, merge and split provisions, and change wording in ways that can affect meaning. A mapping that is roughly right at the level of subject matter can still be wrong in its detail, and in criminal law detail is everything. Treating the framework-level table above as a navigational aid — and the primary text as the authority — is the only safe way to use any such mapping.
How can AI help practitioners transition?
Judicio is a citation-first workspace, and the discipline of citing to a source is exactly what this transition needs.
Mapping old sections to new
When you are reading an older judgment, file, or precedent that cites IPC, CrPC, or Evidence Act provisions, you need to understand the corresponding position under the new codes. Legal Research — which covers Indian Kanoon among dedicated jurisdiction databases and a curated legal web search across 100 or more jurisdictions — can help you locate the relevant new provisions and authority, with every web source archived as a permanent PDF and every finding cited to its page. You then verify the mapping against the official text before relying on it. AI accelerates the search; it does not certify the answer.
Researching under the new codes
As judgments interpreting the new codes accumulate, research has to span both the old jurisprudence and the emerging case law. Because Judicio archives each web source as a permanent PDF and cites every finding to a page, your research trail stays intact and checkable — which matters especially during a transition when the law is unsettled and citations are easy to get wrong.
Transitional questions add another layer. Which framework applies to a given matter can depend on when the relevant events occurred and when proceedings began, and the two bodies of law will run in parallel for years as older matters work through the system. Research therefore has to be precise about which code governs, and about the date and court of any authority relied upon. A workspace that keeps every source pinned to a permanent, citable record helps practitioners keep that distinction straight rather than blurring old and new law together.
Updating templates and precedents
Firms maintain libraries of templates, checklists, and model documents that reference the old codes. Drafting and Document Review can help you work through these systematically — identifying references to old provisions and drafting updated language — so the library reflects the new codes. A lawyer reviews and approves every change; the tool simply makes a large, tedious update faster and more consistent.
The same approach helps with the knowledge base a firm relies on day to day — standard notices, opinion templates, and precedent files. Working through them methodically now, with each updated reference checked against the primary text, prevents the slow accumulation of errors that occurs when old-code citations linger in documents that are reused for years.
What does mapping an old IPC section to the BNS look like?
Imagine updating an old opinion that turns on a charge of cheating under the Indian Penal Code. The task is to find the corresponding position under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita without introducing an error. A disciplined, AI-assisted workflow looks like this.
- Identify the old provision. Pin down exactly which IPC section and sub-clause the precedent relied on, and the specific ingredients in issue.
- Search for the new provision. Use Legal Research to locate the candidate BNS provision and any early authority discussing it, with each web source archived as a permanent PDF and each finding cited to its page.
- Compare ingredients, not just numbers. Read the candidate section against the old one to check that the definition, exceptions, and punishment actually correspond — renumbering plus substantive change means a matching label is not enough.
- Verify against the bare act. Confirm the section and its wording against the official text on India Code before relying on it, and record that you did.
The illustrative table below shows the kind of mapping such a search might surface. It is illustrative only and must be verified against the bare act, since subsections, ingredients, and punishments may differ.
| Old IPC provision (illustrative) | Candidate BNS provision (verify) | Subject |
|---|---|---|
| IPC Section 302 | BNS Section 103 | Punishment for murder |
| IPC Section 420 | BNS Section 318 | Cheating |
| IPC Section 379 | BNS Section 303 | Punishment for theft |
Used this way, AI shortens the search and keeps a clean citation trail, while the practitioner makes the call. The mapping is a starting point to confirm against primary sources, never an authority in itself, and nothing here is legal advice.
What are the limits and risks?
The central risk during this transition is false confidence. An AI tool can produce a fluent, plausible mapping from an old section to a new one and still be wrong, because the correspondence is genuinely complex and sometimes substantive. The safeguards are straightforward: insist on citations, verify every mapping and proposition against the primary text on India Code, and treat AI output as a research aid rather than authority. Judicio supports this by being citation-first and by archiving sources, but the responsibility to verify remains entirely with the practitioner. Judicio does not train on your data, is hosted on Google Cloud, and provides role-based access and an audit trail — and nothing it produces is legal advice.
Getting started
A sensible starting project is to take one frequently used template or one older precedent and work through its old-code references with research and drafting support, verifying each against the primary text. See the relevant tools on the features page, or ask about India-specific templates via contact. For related reading, see AI for FIR, chargesheet and evidence review, researching Indian case law with AI, and the best legal AI tools in India.
You can try the workflow on a 7-day free trial with 500 credits and no credit card. Run a real mapping question through it, follow the citations to the source, and see whether a verify-everything, citation-first approach fits how you are navigating the new criminal codes.