SC closes petition as BNSS replaces discriminatory CrPC summons provision

Noting that the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) has eliminated the discriminatory provision, the Supreme Court on Tuesday closed proceedings in a petition challenging the validity of a Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) provision that allowed only an “adult male member” to accept summons on behalf of a family member who could not be found.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud acknowledged a statement by Attorney General R Venkataramani that BNSS, the new law that replaced the CrPC and took effect on July 1, has removed the anomaly.

Section 64 of the CrPC required that summons be served to “some adult male member of his family residing with him” if the person concerned could not be found. The BNSS’s Section 66 has removed the term “male,” allowing any adult family member to receive the summons.

Recording that Parliament has addressed the petitioner’s grievances through the new provision, the bench, which also included Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, disposed of the writ petition filed by Kush Kalra in 2022.

Advocate Jyotika Kalra, representing the petitioner, praised the government’s move, noting that the new legal provision removes the discriminatory language of Section 64 of the CrPC.

The court admitted the petition in November 2022, seeking a response from the Centre on the issue. The petition argued that Section 64 of the CrPC discriminated against women by treating female family members as incapable of accepting summons on behalf of the person summoned.

It added that excluding female family members by specifying “male” in the section lacked any reasonable connection to the provision’s goal of avoiding unreasonable delays in criminal proceedings. It also failed to consider situations where the person summoned lived only with female family members or where the only person available at the time of service was a female.

“The possibility of such a situation (the only person available at the time of service of summons is a female) is particularly high in light of the stark gender gap in the workforce between males and females, ie, only 22 percent of Indian women are at work, which entails that the remaining 78 percent of women are at home,” the petition said.

The petitioner said that excluding female family members from receiving summons on behalf of the summoned person violates women’s rights to equality under Articles 14 and 15, the right to know under Article 19(1)(a), and the right to dignity under Article 21 of the Constitution.