History
During the Moghul rule courts administered the "Sharia" to the exclusion of Hindu law. Islamic law gave way to English criminal law with the increase of British influence in the Indian subcontinent. Before 1860, The English criminal law, as modified by several acts was administered in the Presidency-Towns of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras.
The draft of the Indian Penal Code was prepared by the First Law Commission, chaired by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Its basis is the law of England freed from superfluities, technicalities and local peculiarities. Elements were also derived from the Napoleonic Code and from Edward Livingston's Louisiana Civil Code of 1825. The first final draft of the Indian Penal Code was submitted to the Governor-General of India in Council in 1837, but the draft was again revised. The drafting was completed in 1850 and it was presented to the Legislative Council in 1856 but it did not take its place on the Indian statute book until a generation later, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The draft then underwent a very careful revision at the hands of Sir Barnes Peacock, Chief Justice, and the puisne Judges of the Calcutta Supreme Court who were members of the Legislative Council, and was passed into law on 6 October 1860. The Code came into operation on 1 January 1862. Unfortunately, Macaulay did not survive to see his masterpiece come into force, having died near the end of 1859.
Read more about this topic: Indian Penal Code
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)