Jharkhand High Court on Monday took suo motu cognisance of an error in the Universal LexisNexis edition of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Bare Act and directed the publishing house to publish a corrigendum in all national and regional newspapers.

The double bench of Justices Ananda Sen and Subhash Chand took note that the editions of Universal LexisNexis (an international law publishing house) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 Bare Act with Short Notes have major errors in Section 103 (2) (on the section about lynching) and has been wrongly reproduced. This, the bench said, could have “serious implications for the interpretation and application of the law”.

Section 103 (2) of the new law reads: “When a group of five or more persons acting in concert commits murder on the ground of race, caste or community, sex, place of birth, language, personal belief or any other similar ground each member of such group shall be punished with death or with imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine.”

However, the LexisNexis version uses the words “any other ground” instead of “any other similar ground”.

“By way of immediate measure, they should highlight this error and publish prominently a corrigendum along with the corrected provision in each and every national newspaper of the country published in English and also in all leading newspapers, published in vernacular languages which have wide circulation in each and every state and Union Territory of the country. This publication must be given prominence so that it catches the eyes of all the readers very easily,” the bench directed the publisher.

Additionally, the court directed that the Bare Acts and Criminal Manual related to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita published by Universal LexisNexis that are still with the booksellers or distributors should only be sold after the necessary rectifications
were made.

The bench also directed Universal LexisNexis to inform the high court of the steps they would take to correct the copies of the Bare Acts and Criminal Manual related to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita that have already been sold and supplied to advocates, institutions and the public at large.

The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA) passed in Parliament December last year, replaced the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), 1973, and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, respectively, and came into effect from Monday.

As opposed to the IPC, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita has 358 sections. Twenty new crimes have been added to the Sanhita and the jail sentences for 33 crimes have been increased under the new criminal law.

Fresh FIRs will be registered against the new criminal laws from July 1. However, cases filed earlier will continue to be tried under the old laws till their final disposal.

The new laws plan to implement a modern justice system in India, bringing in provisions such as zero FIR, online registration of police complaints, summons through electronic modes such as SMS and mandatory videography of crime scenes for all
heinous crimes.