Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday, 19 June 2026, stated that the three new criminal laws enacted by Parliament are designed to deliver justice from the stage of an FIR to conviction within three years, underscoring the government's push to overhaul India's colonial-era legal framework.

Context

Shah's post, shared on X, states plainly: 'From FIR to conviction, the goal of the new criminal laws is to deliver justice in three years.' The remark frames the three-year timeline as the central ambition of legislation that came into force on 1 July 2024, replacing statutes that had governed India's criminal justice system since the British era.

The three laws — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA) — together replaced the Indian Penal Code 1860, the Code of Criminal Procedure 1973, and the Indian Evidence Act 1872 respectively.

Policy Backdrop

Parliament passed all three bills in December 2023, following a draft prepared by a committee headed by former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi that was first constituted in 2020. The laws were notified for enforcement from 1 July 2024 across India, with Jammu and Kashmir initially excluded from the rollout.

The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, the procedural law among the three, specifically introduces mandatory timelines for investigation and trial — the legislative mechanism through which the three-year goal is intended to be achieved. The Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam modernises rules on digital and forensic evidence, a reform seen as essential to faster adjudication in an era of cybercrime and electronic records.

The overhaul aligns with longstanding recommendations of the Law Commission of India and the Malimath Committee, both of which had called for time-bound trials and stronger forensic mandates to address a backlog of cases. India's court pendency has long exceeded 5 crore matters across all levels of the judiciary.

Stakeholders and Impact

Police forces across states have undergone nationwide training programmes since 2024 to adapt to the new procedural requirements, and state governments have notified their own implementing rules. The laws directly affect crime victims, who under the new framework are entitled to progress updates within specified timeframes — a departure from the largely discretionary older system.

The judiciary faces the most structural pressure, as the BNSS mandates trial completion within defined periods. Legal practitioners and bar associations have raised questions about whether court infrastructure and judicial vacancies can support the pace the laws envision. The Union Ministry of Home Affairs, which shepherded the legislation, has positioned these timelines as enforceable commitments rather than aspirational targets.

What's Next

State-level compliance reports on mandatory investigation and trial timelines, as well as early conviction rate data under the new laws, are expected to be placed before Parliament in an upcoming session. Review petitions challenging specific procedural changes under the BNSS are pending before the Supreme Court of India, and their outcome could shape how strictly the timelines are applied in practice.

Shah's statement signals that the Ministry of Home Affairs intends to keep the three-year benchmark at the centre of its narrative on criminal justice reform — and that performance against this benchmark will likely become a political and administrative accountability metric in the months ahead.