How Indian law fits together
One supreme law, three codes under it, a fixed order in which they apply, and the courts that apply them. Every box below opens the text it names — all of it free to read, and all of it the same text the app carries offline.
And this is the order it runs in
Before any law is named, something has happened.
And these are the courts that apply it
In practice
The Constitution sits above all three codes: it is what gives Parliament the power to write them, and a provision of any of them can be struck down for conflicting with a fundamental right.
The three codes divide one job between them. The BNS names the offence and its punishment, the BNSS is the machinery that carries a case from the first information to the judgment, and the BSA decides what may be put before the court as proof. A single case touches all three, in that order.
What any of it means in a given case is settled by a court. A case is tried by a Magistrate or a Court of Session; a Magistrate’s conviction is appealed to the Court of Session, and a Court of Session’s to the High Court. From there a case may reach the Supreme Court, whose ruling then binds every court beneath it.
All three came into force on 1 July 2024, replacing the Indian Penal Code of 1860, the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1973 and the Indian Evidence Act of 1872 respectively. One provision was held back: BNS section 106(2), on causing death by rash driving and fleeing, was excepted from that notification and is not yet in force.