Justice N. Anand Venkatesh of the Madras High Court on Tuesday told lawyers present in his court hall that he would continue to refer to the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Code of Criminal Procedure (Cr.P.C.) and the Indian Evidence Act by their original names even after they get replaced with new laws named in Hindi.
“I will refer to IPC only as IPC, because I don’t know that language (Hindi),” he told the advocates during the hearing of a case in which he had requested the Bar members to assist him in answering a crucial question of law related to the limitation period, prescribed under Section 468 of the Cr.P.C., for taking cognisance of offences.
Madras Bar Association (MBA) secretary S. Thiruvengadam, advocate Mohamed Riyaz, Additional Public Prosecutor (APP) A. Damodaran and others assisted the court by referring to the Supreme Court judgements on the issue. The lawyers also brought to the notice of the judge the various amendments made to the Cr.P.C.
When the APP wanted to refer to a pari materia (on the same subject) provision in the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita,2023 which was to replace the Cr.P.C., he requested the judge to look into the “new Act.” The judge, in a lighter vein, asked the APP to name the new Act and found the law officer to be struggling to pronounce the Hindi words.
“So, Damodaran has cleverly chosen to simply refer to it as new Act,” the judge said, amidst laughter in the court hall and told the lawyers that he would continue to refer to the three basic criminal laws by their original English names because he does not know Hindi.
Apart from the Cr.P.C., Parliament had recently decided to replace the IPC as well as the Indian Evidence Act with the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 and the Bharatiya Sakshya, 2023 respectively. The President too had accorded assent to the three new criminal laws and they are expected to come into force this year.
