A Strenuous and Indefatigable Patrolling from The Indian ‘Penal’ Code to Bharatiya ‘Nyaya’ Sanhita.

The working of the Police System is a crucial indicator to gauge the function of governance and therefore the entire welfare, polity and politics of the country. Policing forms the most vital link between the government and governed; thus, it is the most visible hand of the state’s authority, many times the coercive hand where individuals are forced to be free. The police is intricately woven into the fabric of democracy, and the journey of police reforms verves hand in hand with the process of democratisation of the whole gamut of socio-political structures. Police reforms act as a litmus test for the ‘people-friendly and people-centric’ government and transparent governance. No government can claim to be people-centric if its policing is deficient in pro-people orientation. However, policing requires lucid and comprehensive rules and regulations emanating from the nature of polity and structures of society, to be followed in letter and spirit as the guiding principles. The introduction of three bills by the union government in the lower house of parliament to repeal colonial-era criminal laws is the watershed moment of metamorphic conjunction in the criminal reform system, and it may realise the long-cherished aspiration of having democratic policing in democratic India. This research paper endeavours to analyse Police reform as an unremitting process having continuity and change with the changing nature of democratic politics and societal milieu post-independence, with a specific analysis of the newly introduced Criminal Laws amendment bills from the prism of ideals of policing in the democratic domain.