Supreme Court tells Madras HC to expeditiously decide challenge to new criminal laws

The Supreme Court on Friday urged the Madras High Court to priortize the hearing of petitions challenging three criminal laws - the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam.

The Bench of Justices Surya Kant, Joymalya Bagchi, and Vipul M Pancholi passed the direction while declining to entertain Federation of Bar Associations or Tamil Nadu and Puducherry's plea seeking transfer of the matter pending before High Court to the top court.

"Having regard to the importance of the issue and that the writ petitions are waiting effective hearing, we request the Chief Justice of the High Court to place the matter before a Division bench. We also request for an early/out of turn hearing of the matters," the Court ordered.

Earlier, the Court was told that notice in the petitions before the High Court was issued on September 2024 and thereafter, they were listed in July 2025. However, no date of hearing has been fixed yet, it was submitted.

The counsel added that the difficulty was that they can’t even pronounce the name of these enactments.

The petitioners pressed for transfer of the case from High Court on the ground that similar petitions are pending before the top court. However, the bench said that it would like to have the advantage of High Court's opinion.

"This is about constitutional validity. We’ll have the advantage of the opinion of the High Court. This is one of the High Courts where we usually wait for their opinion," the Court remarked.

Interestingly, the High Court had last year remarked that the nomenclature of the three new criminal laws had caused chaos even if the objective behind enacting the laws might have been good.

The bench of Justice SS Sundar and Justice N Senthil Kumar had also said that though objections and opinions were called from stakeholders and public before enacting the laws, the same was done more like a formality and such opinions were not actually considered.

"The object might be good but it has created chaos. Objections and opinions were called for but it was only a formality. None of them were implemented," it had said.

The Court had made the observations while hearing a batch of Public Interest Litigation petitions challenging the three criminal laws.

One of the petitioners before the High Court is RS Bharathi, who is the organising secretary of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).

As per the plea, the new criminal laws are "concerted design to weaponize the law by criminalizing democratic and peaceful acts of expressing dissent and opposition to state policies, systematically dismantle the most fundamental principles of criminal jurisprudence, such as the right to free and fair trial, and centralize powers of the police and provide impunity and ensure immunity of the police and state officials."

The High Court had earlier refused to stay the three new laws in a PIL challenging the Sanskrit/ Hindi names given to them