Explainer · New Criminal Codes · Risk Screening

How the New Criminal Codes Change Criminal-Risk Screening

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

On 1 July 2024, India replaced its three core criminal statutes. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 replaced the Indian Penal Code, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 replaced the Indian Evidence Act. For anyone who screens a person or a company for criminal risk, this is not a cosmetic change: offences are renumbered, new FIRs are registered under the new sections, and older matters continue under the old ones, so a search now has to understand both regimes at once. This explainer sets out how the new codes change criminal-risk screening in practice, why a search must span two regimes during the transition, and how to run a screening that does not miss matters because a section number changed. It is general information, not legal advice. Last verified October 2026.

01What changed on 1 July 2024

The three new codes replaced the colonial-era statutes that had governed Indian criminal law for over a century:

• Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS) replaced the Indian Penal Code, 1860. This is the substantive law of offences, so it is the one that matters most for risk screening.
• Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS) replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, governing how investigations, FIRs and trials run.
• Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA) replaced the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.

The codes came into force on 1 July 2024. From that date, new offences are registered and charged under the new codes, while matters that arose earlier continue under the old ones.

02Why screening now spans two regimes

The single most important point for screening is that the two regimes run in parallel for a long time. An offence committed before 1 July 2024 is generally dealt with under the old IPC, while an offence on or after that date is under the BNS. Because criminal matters take years to resolve, the court and FIR record will contain a mix of IPC and BNS references for many years to come.

A criminal-risk search that looks only for the new section numbers will miss every matter still running under the old ones, and a search that looks only for the old numbers will miss everything filed since July 2024.

So a screening done today has to cover both. A person with an older cheating case under an IPC section and a newer one under the corresponding BNS section should surface fully, not half, regardless of which section number the searcher happens to use.

03Renumbering and what it means for a search

The BNS does not simply re-letter the IPC. It reorganises and renumbers offences, so a section number a screener has used for years now points somewhere different, or to nothing, under the new code. A few well-known examples illustrate the shift:

04What a screening search must handle

Given renumbering and the dual regime, a criminal-risk screening search has to do three things it did not have to do before mid-2024:

• Search by party, not by section. The reliable way to catch a person's or company's criminal matters is to search the names across forums and read what comes back, rather than hunting for a particular section number that may have changed.
• Recognise both old and new references. When results are classified by offence, the search should map an old IPC reference and its new BNS counterpart to the same real-world risk, so a reviewer is not misled by the label.
• Cover the forums where criminal matters sit. FIRs, magistrate courts, sessions courts and special courts, under both codes.

In short, the change raises the cost of a naive, section-number search and raises the value of a party-name search that understands both regimes.

05The screening workflow

The practical workflow for criminal-risk screening after the new codes is much the same as before, with the two-regime awareness built in:

• Name the subjects. The individual or entity, plus the people behind it, under their correct legal names.
• Search across forums. Run the names across the criminal forums at once, so matters under both the IPC and the BNS surface together.
• Read with both codes in mind. Treat an older IPC matter and a newer BNS matter as parts of the same risk picture, not two unrelated things.
• Apply judgement. A pending FIR is not a conviction, and the stage and seriousness of a matter decide how it weighs.

This keeps screening reliable through the transition, which will last as long as old matters remain alive in the system.

06Reading the result honestly

Criminal-risk screening is an input, not a verdict, and the new codes do not change that. Two caveats apply as before, with one added by the transition:

• "Nothing on record" is not a clean chit. It means no matter was found in the registries searched, on the date searched, under the names searched.
• A hit on a common name is not proof. Individuals frequently share names, so every finding needs a match-confidence flag and a human check.
• A section label may be in the old or new code. During the transition, do not assume a matter is recent because it cites a BNS section, or old because it cites an IPC one; read the matter, not just the label.

Screening informs a decision; it is not a finding of guilt and not legal advice.

07Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

The new codes make a party-name search that understands both regimes more valuable, and that is what Claw's ClawScore does: name a person or entity, and it returns every matter it finds across 9,102 courts, benches and forums in one scored Excel workbook, covering criminal matters whether they sit under the old IPC or the new BNS, with a ClawScore risk band, a related-parties view and a match-confidence flag on each finding. Because it searches by party across forums rather than by a single section number, a renumbered offence does not cause a miss. Constant Monitoring watches a list of names and reports new filings on a schedule, with searches in under 5 seconds, from Rs 500 per search with monitoring, and Claw does not use your searched names or documents to train its AI models. It is a litigation and criminal-risk input, not a finding of guilt, and a clean result means nothing was found on the forums and date searched. You can create a FREE Claw account to try it. For how the new labour codes change a different timeline, see full and final settlement timing under the Code on Wages.

08Sources and further reading

• India Code (bare text of the BNS, BNSS and BSA, 2023): indiacode.nic.in
• Ministry of Home Affairs (new criminal laws): mha.gov.in
• eCourts (case status): ecourts.gov.in
• National Judicial Data Grid: njdg.ecourts.gov.in
• Claw: clawlaw.in

Last verified October 2026. The new criminal codes came into force on 1 July 2024; section mappings are illustrative and should be confirmed against the bare Acts. This is general information, not legal advice.

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