The essential object of criminal law is to protect society against criminals and law-breakers. For this purpose the law holds out threats of punishments to prospective lawbreakers as well as attempts to make the actual offenders suffer the prescribed punishments for their crimes. Therefore, criminal law, in its wider sense, consists of both the substantive criminal law and the procedural (or adjective) criminal law. Substantive criminal law defines offences and prescribes punishments for the same, while the procedural law administers the substantive law.

Therefore the two main statues which deals with administration of criminal cases in our country are criminal procedure code i.e. Cr.P.C and Indian Penal Code i.e. IPC being procedural and substantive respectively. However with the changing times the societal norms also change and people who are part of this society have to accept this change either by way of compromise or any other way in order to adjust and make them still the part of the very same society. In earlier days there was no criminal law in uncivilized society. Every man was liable to be attacked in his person or property at any time by any one. The person attacked either succumbed or over-powered his opponent. “A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, a life for a life” was the forerunner of crimi­nal justice . As time advanced, the injured person agreed to accept compensation, instead of killing his adversary. Subsequently, a sliding scale came into existence for satisfying ordinary offences. Such a system gave birth to archaic criminal law.

For a long time, the application of these principles remained with the parties themselves, but gradually this function came to be performed by the State. The germs of criminal jurisprudence came into existence in India from the time of Manu. In the category of crimes Manu has recognized assault, theft, robbery, false evidence, slander, criminal breach of trust, cheating, adultery and rape. The king protected his subjects and the subjects in return owed him allegiance and paid him revenue. The king administered justice himself, and, if busy, the matter was entrusted to a Judge. If a criminal was fined, the fine went to the king’s treasury, and was not given as compensation to the injured party. 

Later with the advent of western jurisprudence and passing of various charters and commissions and the advent of British rule the Indian society succumbed or we can probably say adjusted or adapted and aligned itself to the adversarial system of justice dispensation which prevails even today but with a lot of changes which have been time and again being made to it to suit to the needs of the changing times. In today’s world one needs to have a receptive, broad and open mind in order to solve various problems which are discussed in chapter one being faced by our justice system. Since it is evident that a change is required in our criminal justice system and there is a need to adhere to recourse to alternative methods of dispute resolution even in criminal cases instead of making a major change we firstly have to see the common features of a trial and the procedure which is followed by our courts or system for the administration of criminal justice and its flaws which is discussed as further. 

At the outset of this chapter the researcher would like to state that owing to paucity of time and nature of topic selected the researcher has limited his scope of study to a certain specific offences only and would be dealing with them and the lacuna which exists in the administration procedure followed and which particular technique of ADR can be used to curb the said problems and side by side would result in a fair and expeditious trial.

Procedure for Administration of Criminal Justice

The procedure of administration of criminal justice in our country is divided into three stages namely investigation, inquiry and trial. The Criminal procedure code 1973 provides for the procedure to be followed in investigation, inquiry and trial, for every offence under the Indian Penal Code or under any other law. Now before discussing the procedure of administration there are certain basic terms one should be aware of these being;

Cognizable offences.

Non cognizable offences.

Inquiry.

Investigation.

Section 2(c) of the Code defines ‘Cognizable Offence’ and ‘Cognizable case’ as follows: –

“Cognizable Offence” means an offence means an offence for which, and “Cognizable case” means a case in which, a police officer may, in accordance with the First Schedule or under any other law for the time being in force, arrest without warrant”.

Whereas section 2(l) defines “Non-cognizable offence” means an offence for which, and “non-cognizable case” means a case in which, a police officer has no authority to arrest without warrant”

                                                                -Shivanshu Goswami

(Advocate High Court Lucknow bench)