The Indian Penal Code
Calcutta
Drafted under Macaulay in 1837 and passed in 1860, the Indian Penal Code takes effect in 1862 and stays in force until 2024.
The first Law Commission, chaired by Thomas Macaulay, finished a draft penal code in 1837. Macaulay died in December 1859, and the code was passed the next year as Act 45 of 1860, on 6 October. It came into force on 1 January 1862, with 511 sections. For the first time one written criminal law ran across British India, replacing the older mix of Company regulations and Hindu and Muslim law.
The code is the longest-lived legal text of the Raj. It passed into Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi law at independence, and in India it lasted until the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita of 2023 replaced it on 1 July 2024.
Parts of it were fought over until the end. The Supreme Court put section 124A, the sedition clause, on hold on 11 May 2022, and in Navtej Singh Johar on 6 September 2018 it struck down section 377 as far as it criminalised consensual sex between adults of the same sex.
- colonial
- political