BNS Section 106(2) Explained,  India’s New Hit-And-Run Law And Why Truckers Revolted

Author(s): Jhanvi Rajput

Paper Details: Volume 4, Issue 4

Citation: IJLSSS 4(4) 08

Page No: 74 – 83

This article examines the legislative journey, jurisprudential foundation, and continuing controversy surrounding Section 106(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 — the “hit-and-run” clause that was frozen by the Central Government within days of the new criminal codes coming into force.

INTRODUCTION: A LAW THAT SPARKED A STRIKE BEFORE IT EVEN APPLIED

In the last week of December 2023, Parliament enacted three statutes designed to replace India’s colonial-era criminal framework  the Indian Penal Code, 1860, the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, and the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. Among the successors  the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA)  none produced as immediate and visceral a public reaction as a single sub-section tucked into Section 106 of the BNS.

Even before the three codes were notified into force, truck, bus, and taxi drivers under the banner of the All India Motor Transport Congress (AIMTC) launched a nationwide strike in the first week of January 2024. Fuel pumps ran dry in several states, vegetable supply chains were disrupted, and state governments scrambled to negotiate with transport unions  all in protest against a provision that had not yet even been switched on. The target of their anger was Section 106(2) of the BNS: a clause that could send a driver to prison for up to ten years for fleeing the scene of a fatal accident without reporting it.

The episode is a rare instance in Indian legislative history where public mobilization forced the executive to withhold a validly enacted provision from commencement. It also raises a question that continues to occupy criminal law academia, the bar, and policymakers well into 2026: does a harsher hit-and-run law actually deter reckless driving, or does it perversely incentivize drivers to disappear rather than face a decade behind bars?

This piece traces that journey  from the anemic Section 304A of the IPC, through the drafting of Section 106, into the protests and the government’s continuing “abeyance” strategy, and finally into a comparative and critical assessment of where Indian hit-and-run jurisprudence is headed.

THE OLD REGIME: SECTION 304A OF THE INDIAN PENAL CODE

Section 304A of the IPC punished “causing death by negligence”  any act done rashly or negligently, not amounting to culpable homicide, that caused another person’s death. The maximum sentence was imprisonment of either description for a term extending to two years, or fine, or both.

For over a century, this single, generic provision governed everything from a doctor’s surgical error to a truck driver mowing down pedestrians and speeding away. Courts and commentators had long criticized the section on several grounds:

• No behavioral distinction. Section 304A did not differentiate between a driver who stopped, rendered aid, and reported the accident, and one who fled the scene, leaving the victim to bleed out on the road. Both faced the same statutory ceiling.
• Disproportionately lenient ceiling. A two-year cap was widely seen as incommensurate with the gravity of a preventable road fatality, especially as India’s road accident death toll  among the highest in the world  kept climbing year after year.
• No incentive to report. Because the punishment did not vary with post-accident conduct, the law offered no legal inducement for a driver to remain at the scene, call for help, or alert the police, during the so-called “golden hour” when timely medical intervention often makes the difference between life and death.

It was this last critique  the absence of any reporting incentive  that directly shaped the drafting of Section 106 of the BNS.

THE NEW LAW: SECTION 106 OF THE BHARATIYA NYAYA SANHITA

Section 106 restructures the offence into two limbs based squarely on the driver’s conduct after the accident, not merely the act that caused it.

Section 106(1) deals with causing death by a rash or negligent act not amounting to culpable homicide. Where the accused stays at the scene, or promptly informs a police officer or magistrate, the maximum sentence is imprisonment for a term that may extend to five years, along with a fine  an increase from the two years previously available under Section 304A. The provision also carries a proviso protecting registered medical practitioners performing medical procedures, whose liability under this section is capped at two years, reflecting concerns raised by doctors’ associations during the drafting process.

Section 106(2) is the escalated, controversial limb. Where the person causing the death by rash or negligent driving escapes from the scene without reporting the incident to a police officer or magistrate “soon after the incident,” the punishment can extend to imprisonment for ten years, together with a fine. In substance  without quoting the statutory text verbatim  the provision converts silent flight from an accident scene into an aggravating factor that roughly doubles the exposure a driver faces.

THE AMBIGUITY THAT FUELED THE PROTESTS

The phrase that triggered nationwide unrest was the requirement that the driver must not have “escaped” without reporting “soon after the incident.” Transport unions argued that the section, as drafted, does not adequately distinguish between:

• a driver who flees to evade legal accountability, and
• a driver who flees or delays reporting out of a genuine and immediate fear of mob violence  a well-documented phenomenon on Indian highways, where bystanders have been known to lynch or seriously assault drivers involved in fatal accidents before police can intervene.

Truckers’ bodies contended that expecting a driver to remain at the scene of an accident that has already turned a crowd hostile is, in practical terms, asking them to risk their own lives to avoid a harsher sentence for the crime of self-preservation. Because the section does not build in an explicit exception for accidents committed under threat of mob violence, and leaves “escaping” open to interpretation by investigating officers, the AIMTC argued the provision was vulnerable to arbitrary application and misuse  a concern that remains, as this article will show, only partially resolved even in 2026.

THE PROTEST AND THE GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE

The AIMTC-led strike in January 2024 was one of the most geographically dispersed transport shutdowns in recent memory, affecting fuel and essential goods movement across multiple states within seventy-two hours. Facing mounting pressure, the Ministry of Home Affairs held consultations with transport union representatives and gave a public assurance that Section 106(2) would not be implemented without further stakeholder consultation.

The government’s chosen mechanism was unusual: rather than amend or repeal the sub-section, it simply excluded Section 106(2) from the commencement notification. When the BNS, BNSS, and BSA were brought into force from 1 July 2024, the notification issued under Section 1(2) of the BNS explicitly appointed that date for “the provisions of the said Sanhita, except the provision of sub-section (2) of section 106.” Identical carve-outs were mirrored in the BNSS and BSA notifications to the extent they cross-referenced the section.

Current status (as of mid-2026): Multiple independent trackers of the new criminal law regime  legal explainers, state police statements, and news reporting from Chandigarh and elsewhere  confirm that Section 106(2) continues to remain in abeyance more than two years after the rest of the BNS took effect. Senior police officers overseeing hit-and-run investigations have publicly noted that FIRs in fatal accident-and-flight cases are being registered instead under a combination of Section 106(1), Section 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder, where applicable), and Section 281 (rash driving endangering personal safety)  a workaround that produces variable outcomes depending on how investigators characterize the accused’s intent. No fresh notification bringing Section 106(2) into force appears to have been issued, and government statements continue to describe consultations with the AIMTC as ongoing rather than concluded. Readers should treat this as a live, moving target and verify the notification position on the Ministry of Home Affairs website before relying on it for practice.

This creates an unusual legal situation: a validly enacted, printed, and citable provision of a central statute that has never actually come into operative force — a scenario more commonly associated with sunset clauses or suspended ordinances than with a core provision of a criminal code.

A COMPARATIVE GLANCE: HOW OTHER JURISDICTIONS TREAT FLIGHT AFTER A FATAL ACCIDENT

India is not alone in grappling with how to punish the decision to flee as distinct from the underlying negligence. The United Kingdom’s Road Traffic Act, 1988, criminalizes “failing to stop and report an accident” as a standalone offence, generally attracting fines and driving disqualification, while the underlying death itself is prosecuted far more severely under causing death by dangerous or careless driving provisions — keeping the “flight” penalty proportionate rather than equating it with homicide-level sentencing. In the United States, hit-and-run statutes vary considerably by state; several states classify a fatal hit-and-run as a felony carrying sentences that can run into decades, particularly where flight is shown to be a deliberate attempt to evade blood-alcohol testing or arrest, but many states retain graduated penalties tied to injury severity rather than a flat, uniform ceiling. The common thread across these regimes is that flight is treated as an aggravating circumstance layered onto the underlying negligence charge — conceptually similar to India’s approach under Section 106 — but the severity gap between “staying” and “fleeing” in most comparable democracies is narrower than the five-to-ten-year jump contemplated by the BNS.

THE PROCEDURAL LAYER: BNSS CLASSIFICATION AND THE MOTOR VEHICLES ACT COMPENSATION SCHEME

For practitioners, the bare text of Section 106 is only half the picture; the procedural consequences under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS) determine how a case actually plays out on the ground.

• Section 106(1) offences are treated as bailable, with bail available largely as a matter of right, subject to the magistrate’s standard discretion.
• Section 106(2), once and if it is ever brought into force, is expected to be treated as a cognizable and non-bailable offence given its punishment bracket — meaning police can arrest without a warrant, and bail would have to be sought from a Sessions Court rather than claimed as of right. Until formal notification and judicial clarification occur, however, this classification remains anticipatory rather than settled law, and defense counsel should treat it as provisional.

Independently of the criminal prosecution, victims of hit-and-run accidents retain access to the compensation scheme under the Motor Vehicles Act, which provides for payouts to victims or their legal heirs regardless of whether the offending driver is ever traced or convicted  a no-fault mechanism intended to soften the financial blow of the “golden hour” being lost, irrespective of how the parallel Section 106 prosecution unfolds. Practitioners advising accident victims should pursue this compensation track independently and promptly, since it is not contingent on the outcome, or even the existence, of a Section 106(2) prosecution.

THE ABSENCE OF CASE LAW ON SECTION 106(2) ITSELF

Because Section 106(2) has not been brought into force, there is, as of writing, no reported judgment actually applying Section 106(2) to convict or acquit an accused — a fact that itself deserves emphasis, since it is easy for secondary literature to conflate discussions about the provision with judgments decided under it. What does exist is:

• Jurisprudential groundwork from the pre-BNS era, most notably the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Alister Anthony Pareira v. State of Maharashtra, where the Court took a stern view of reckless driving causing multiple deaths and observed that courts must not treat such offences with misplaced leniency  reasoning frequently invoked by commentators to justify the enhanced sentencing structure later adopted in Section 106.
• A growing body of first-instance cases charged under Section 106(1) read together with other BNS provisions such as Section 105 or Section 281, since investigators cannot presently invoke Section 106(2) at all. Reports from jurisdictions such as Chandigarh indicate that even high-profile hit-and-run fatalities are being prosecuted through this composite route rather than under the still-dormant Section 106(2).

For law students and early-career practitioners, the practical takeaway is this: any moot problem, examination answer, or client advisory that assumes Section 106(2) is currently operative and has generated its own body of appellate case law would be factually incorrect as of mid-2026. The correct answer is that it remains suspended, and the applicable sentencing ceiling for hit-and-run-adjacent conduct today is whatever combination of Sections 105, 106(1), and 281 the investigating officer chooses to invoke.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS: DOES A HARSHER PENALTY DETER, OR DOES IT BACKFIRE?

The central policy debate around Section 106(2) is genuinely contested, and deserves an even-handed treatment rather than a one-sided verdict.

The case for the enhanced penalty rests on classical deterrence theory: raising the cost of an undesirable act  here, abandoning an injured victim  should, in principle, reduce its incidence. Proponents argue that the two-year ceiling under Section 304A imposed no meaningful behavioral cost on a driver deciding whether to stop or flee, and that a decade-long sentence forces drivers to internalize the value of the “golden hour” for accident victims. They also point out that the section does not criminalize the accident more harshly  Section 106(1)’s five-year ceiling for negligent death already exceeds the old 304A cap  it specifically and additionally penalizes the choice to disappear, which is a distinct and, in their view, independently culpable act.

The case against  or at least the case for caution  turns on a perverse-incentive argument. Critics contend that once the punishment for being caught after fleeing rises to a level comparable with culpable homicide, a driver’s rational calculus may shift: if remaining at the scene risks mob violence and reporting still exposes the driver to years of imprisonment under Section 106(1), while fleeing successfully carries a chance of evading detection altogether, the marginal deterrent value of raising the “caught while fleeing” penalty from two to ten years may be smaller than legislators hoped  and could, in edge cases, encourage more determined, better-planned flight (destroying evidence, disposing of vehicles, leaving the jurisdiction) rather than voluntary surrender. This is not a claim that harsher penalties never deter; it is a caution that deterrence theory assumes rational, well-informed actors weighing probabilities of detection, and in the chaos of a fatal accident  particularly on rural highways where the risk of mob violence is real that assumption may not hold cleanly.

A workable middle path, floated in academic commentary, would combine the enhanced penalty with a clear, codified defense or mitigating provision for flight motivated by an imminent, objectively verifiable threat to the driver’s own safety  distinguishing calculated evasion from panicked self-preservation. Whether Parliament, or the government through further consultation, ultimately builds such a carve-out into Section 106(2) before it is finally notified will determine whether the provision achieves its stated deterrent goal or simply shifts the locus of the problem from “accident and abandonment” to “accident and disappearance.”

SECTION-MAPPING BOX: IPC SECTION 304A VS. BNS SECTION 106

CONCLUSION

Section 106(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita occupies a strange place in Indian legal history: a provision Parliament enacted, the executive printed, and the public protested — all before it ever touched a single accused. Its suspension is not a footnote; it is the story. For law students, the enduring lesson is that legislative text and operative law are not synonyms, and that tracking a provision’s commencement notification is as important as parsing its language. For practitioners, the immediate reality is that hit-and-run prosecutions today are being stitched together from Sections 105, 106(1), and 281 of the BNS, pending a political resolution between the Ministry of Home Affairs and the transport lobby that has, at the time of writing, still not arrived. And for policy watchers, Section 106(2) remains a live experiment in unresolved form: a test of whether Indian criminal law can calibrate deterrence and fairness precisely enough to survive contact with the chaos of a real Indian highway.

Disclaimer: This article is intended for academic and informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. The implementation status of Section 106(2) BNS is subject to change; readers should verify the current notification position with the Ministry of Home Affairs or a qualified advocate before relying on this analysis in practice or litigation.

https://thelegalqna.com/hit-and-run-new-law-in-india-2025-section-106-of-bns/ — additional detail on the Pareira precedent and behavioral distinction rationale

https://www.taxmanagementindia.com/visitor/detail_article.asp?ArticleID=12825 — confirms the exact carve-out language in the July 2024 commencement notification and the January 2024 truckers’ protest

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/chandigarh/year-on-new-law-to-deal-with-hit-run-cases-still-under-review/ — Chandigarh SSP confirming 106(2) still not implemented a year on, cases being filed under 106(1)/105/281 instead

https://sudhirrao.com/the-status-of-indias-new-hit-and-run-law-bns-section-106-explained/ — plain-language confirmation that 106(2) remains on hold pending stakeholder consultation

https://jurigram.com/advocates/resources/new-laws/304a-ipc-in-bns — practitioner-facing note on 106(1) vs 106(2), bail strategy, and BNSS procedural interplay

https://www.ensureias.com/blog/general/hit-and-run-new-law-the-bns-framework — 2026-dated update noting continued government consultation with AIMTC

https://vajiramandravi.com/current-affairs/hit-and-run-new-law/ — background on the protest, AIMTC’s demands, and the suspension announcement

https://testbook.com/ugc-net-law/hit-and-run-new-law — summary of 106(1) vs 106(2) penalty structure and current enforcement gap

https://x.com/MrsGandhi/status/1742180048034247004 — contemporaneous political commentary from January 2024 explaining the sentencing logic

https://lawsection.in/bharatiya-nyaya-sanhita-bns-2023-key-features-sections-and-landmark-judgments-2025/ — overview citing Alister Anthony Pareira v. State of Maharashtra and general BNS judicial trends