With President Pratibha Patil giving assent to the newly revamped and amended CrPC (Amendment) Act 2008, and once the amended law comes into force, Section 498A (popularly known as dowry law) would be rendered a toothless penal provision as errant husbands and in-laws would no longer face immediate arrests shunting them to jail.
Once the aforesaid amended law is promulgated and thus becomes effective (which it would become shortly), the police instead of arresting the accused would have to issue a ‘Notice of Appearance’ for any offence punishable with imprisonment up to seven years. This would give the accused enough time and reason to move courts with anticipatory bail applications with good end results. Incidentally Sec 498A attracts a maximum punishment of 3 years in prison. The police could only arrest the accused if he does not appear before the police in response to the notice.
The bill was passed in parliament with stunning speed and even President gave the node to the bill in barely three weeks time, which is most unusual. Normally a bill takes anything from six months to years before the Presidents give assent to a bill.
Seven years or less is maximum term of imprisonment for a host of offences like attempt to commit culpable homicide (Sec 308), robbery (Sec 393), cheating (Sec 420), death caused by negligence (Sec 304A), breaching the modesty of women, voluntarily causing grievous hurt (Sec 325), and the much talked about mental and/or physical torture of brides by any member(s) of in-laws family covered under sec 498A of Indian Penal Code (IPC).
A number of Bar Associations and lawyers across the country observed strikes in various courts after the bill was passed in parliament, arguing that the amendment of section 41 of CrPC- which does away with the mandatory provisions of immediate arrest of the accused- would remove the fear from the minds of criminals.
The section 41 of the CrPC, as it stood before amendment, empowers a police officer to arrest any person concerned in any cognizable offence, without an order of a magistrate and without any arrest warrant.
Even some Chief Ministers have voiced their concern over the amendments in CrPC during a conference on internal security in New Delhi on 6th Jan’09. Allaying those concerns, the home minister P.Chidambaram wrote to all Chief Ministers on 13th Jan’09 explaining why it was necessary to make such changes in the Criminal Procedure Code.