Punjab's Anti-Sacrilege Amendment: A Dangerous And Disproportionate Precedent

The AAP government's eleventh-hour legislation raises serious questions about intent, proportionality, and the risk of misuse

The Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab has, in nearly four years in office, been conspicuous for its legislative inactivity. Having swept to power in 2022 on a wave of popular mandate, it has passed precious little by way of substantive law reform. It is, therefore, both striking and concerning that the government has chosen, in what is effectively the final year of its first term, to wade into one of the most politically charged and legally sensitive domains possible: the criminalisation of sacrilege. The Jaagat Jot Sri Guru Granth Sahib Satkar (Amendment) Bill, 2026, passed by the Punjab Vidhan Sabha, prescribes a minimum punishment of seven years and a maximum of twenty years of imprisonment — extendable to life — for acts of sacrilege against the Saroop(s) of Sri Guru Granth Sahib. The timing, the content, and the legal architecture of this legislation warrant serious public scrutiny.

An Unnecessary and Redundant Law

Let us begin with the foundational question: was this law necessary at all? The answer, on a plain reading of existing statutes, is no. Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, now retained in substantially identical form under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), already penalises deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings. It applies across all religions and has been on the books since 1927. The sacrilege of a sacred scripture — any sacred scripture — is already cognisable under this provision. The Punjab government has not explained why existing law was inadequate, nor has it provided any empirical basis for the claim that stronger, religion-specific legislation was required.

Disproportionate Punishment: A Comparison That Should Give Us Pause

The punishment prescribed under the amended Act deserves particular attention, because it exposes the legislation's fundamental disproportionality. A minimum of seven years for sacrilege, rising to twenty years and potentially life imprisonment, places this offence in the same bracket as rape under the BNS, and above the minimum punishment prescribed for terrorist acts under Section 15 of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), where the floor is five years and the ceiling is life imprisonment. Dacoity with murder under the IPC carries a similar sentencing range. One is compelled to ask: is the Punjab government of the view that the sacrilege of a holy book is as grave — or graver — than rape, gang rape, dacoity with murder or a terrorist attack? Even if one fully appreciates the sanctity of Sri Guru Granth Sahib to the Sikh faith, the principle of proportionality in criminal law demands that punishment be commensurate with harm. A statute that equates the desecration of a religious text with mass violence or sexual assault does not reflect sound jurisprudence; it reflects electoral calculation.

The Shadow of Pakistan — and the Lesson We Must Not Ignore

The subcontinent's experience with blasphemy and sacrilege laws offers a grim cautionary tale that the Punjab government appears to have either forgotten or chosen to disregard. Pakistan's blasphemy laws, codified in Sections 295-B and 295-C of its Penal Code, have been instruments of systematic persecution — deployed overwhelmingly against religious minorities, the poor, and political dissidents. The assassination of Punjab's Governor Salman Taseer in 2011, killed by his own bodyguard for defending Asia Bibi, a Christian woman falsely accused of blasphemy, remains perhaps the most chilling reminder of where such laws can lead when religious sentiment is weaponised by state and society alike. Closer home, Section 295A of the IPC — a far less draconian provision — has repeatedly been invoked to silence journalists, authors, activists and members of minority communities. The misuse is not incidental; it is structural. When the law is framed broadly enough, and enforcement is left to local police under social and political pressure, abuse becomes near-inevitable.

No Safeguards: A Critical Absence

What makes the Punjab amendment particularly alarming is not merely the severity of punishment, but the near-total absence of procedural safeguards. Section 295A, under both the CrPC and the BNSS, requires prior sanction from the government before a court takes cognisance of the offence under Section 196. This is a critical filter: it allows the executive — central or state — to screen out frivolous or motivated complaints before they snowball into prosecutions. The requirement acts as a check on the reflexive weaponisation of the law. The Punjab amendment contains no equivalent mechanism. There is no mandatory sanction, no screening authority, no institutional gate between an accusation and an arrest.

The Bill does provide that investigation must be conducted by an officer of the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) or above. This is a thin safeguard at best, and anyone familiar with how police forces function under political pressure will understand why. The more significant provision is that the offence has been made cognisable, non-bailable and non-compoundable. In plain terms: the police can arrest without a warrant, the accused cannot claim bail as a matter of right, and even if both parties wish to resolve the matter, the courts cannot compound the case. For false accusations — and there will be false accusations — this means the accused has almost no recourse at the trial court stage and must approach the High Court or Supreme Court, a process that takes years and enormous resources. The accused will have already spent considerable time in custody.

Another Weapon in the Armoury of a Troubled Police Force

Punjab has witnessed, in recent years, a deeply troubling phenomenon: extrajudicial killings and mob violence carried out in the name of punishing acts of sacrilege. Individuals accused — sometimes on nothing more than rumour or suspicion — of desecrating the Guru Granth Sahib have been lynched or killed before any court has had the opportunity to examine the evidence. In many of these cases, the state machinery has been slow to act, and perpetrators of such vigilante violence have faced little meaningful accountability. This is the ground reality into which this amendment is being introduced.

The effect of this legislation, in such an environment, is not merely to supplement the law — it is to add a formidable new weapon to the armoury of local police forces that have historically been susceptible to political direction, communal pressure, and abuse of authority. Punjab's Police has a long and well-documented history, from the dark years of militancy through to the present day, of deploying legal provisions selectively and coercively. A law that allows cognisable, non-bailable arrest for an offence that is difficult to prove and easy to allege — with no prior sanction requirement — hands that police force an instrument whose potential for misuse is enormous. Given this history, the enthusiasm with which this amendment has been enacted ought to provoke caution rather than celebration.

The Evidentiary Problem

There is an additional, practical difficulty that the legislature appears not to have grappled with: the question of proof. Sacrilege, by its nature, is often discovered after the fact. A damaged Saroop, a torn page, a defaced scripture — these are acts that typically leave no direct witness, no CCTV footage, no digital trail. In such a vacuum of evidence, the temptation to blame the nearest convenient target — a member of a minority community, an ideological opponent, a personal rival — is enormous. We have already seen such dynamics play out in sacrilege cases in Punjab over the past decade, where investigations dragged on for years, political blame was traded freely, and the guilty were never conclusively identified. A law that prescribes life imprisonment for an offence that is exceptionally difficult to prove, and where any accusation triggers immediate arrest, is a law designed — whether intentionally or not — for misuse. In short, this amendment risks becoming not a shield for the faith, but a legal bomb — one whose detonation could cause damage that no one, least of all the government, has fully anticipated.

A Narrowing of Scope That Is Also a Problem

It is worth recalling that earlier iterations of Punjab's sacrilege legislation — versions that were referred to the President of India for assent — were framed to cover the sacred scriptures of all religions. That approach was, admittedly, not without its own difficulties: it potentially widened the ambit of blasphemy-style laws in ways that could themselves cause harm. But it at least had the virtue of formal equality. The present amendment, however, is confined to a single scripture of a single faith. Religion-specific criminal legislation of this kind sits uneasily with Articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution, which guarantee equality before law and non-discrimination on grounds of religion. The question of whether a state legislature can enact religion-specific penal provisions, and whether doing so violates constitutional guarantees of equal treatment, deserves serious legal examination — and is likely to attract challenge.

The Alternative: Certainty of Punishment, Not Severity

It is a well-established principle of criminology and penology, recognised across jurisdictions, that it is the certainty of punishment — not its severity — that deters crime. The Punjab government's instinct to respond to the genuine public outrage over sacrilege incidents by dramatically escalating sentences is understandable politically, but it is poor policy. The real failure in past sacrilege cases has not been that the law was too lenient; it has been that investigation was shoddy, prosecution was dilatory, and the guilty were never brought to book.

The more effective and constitutionally sound approach would have been to strengthen the machinery of investigation and prosecution under Section 295A of the IPC or its BNS equivalent section 299. This would mean ensuring that where prima facie evidence exists, sanction under Section 217 of the BNSS is granted expeditiously rather than being allowed to languish in bureaucratic limbo. It would mean the appointment of experienced special public prosecutors, the conduct of trials on a day-to-day basis, and meaningful accountability for investigating officers who allow cases to collapse. It is the prospect of swift, certain conviction — not the prospect of a longer sentence — that would deter potential offenders and provide genuine justice to the community.

Punjab's Long History With Religion and Law: A Warning

It would be incomplete to discuss this amendment without recalling Punjab's own history with religion-inspired legislation. In colonial Punjab, the controversy surrounding the pamphlet Rangila Rasul in the 1920s led directly to religion-specific legislative responses, most notably Section 295A of the IPC itself — a provision enacted in 1927 precisely to address the religious tensions that had been inflamed by that episode. That history should give us pause. The lesson Punjab's past offers is not that religious sensitivity is illegitimate, but that legislation enacted in the heat of communal tension, without adequate safeguards, tends to harden divisions rather than heal them, and to be wielded as a political instrument rather than a legal one.

Punjab has seen religion-inspired violence from actors across the political spectrum — and it has seen, repeatedly, how the formal law can be used to pursue informal vendettas. An amendment of this kind — hastily passed, disproportionate in punishment, thin on safeguards, and introduced at the fag end of a government's term — risks becoming precisely such an instrument. The rule of law demands more than the appearance of toughness. It demands wisdom, restraint, and fidelity to constitutional principle.

Legislation as Electoral Signal

It is difficult, viewing this amendment in its full context, to escape the conclusion that it is primarily a political act. The AAP government, facing an election cycle, has chosen a subject on which few in Punjab's political mainstream will publicly dissent. The issue of sacrilege is genuinely painful for the Sikh community, and no politician wishes to appear insufficiently protective of the faith. But good governance requires the courage to distinguish between what is popular and what is prudent. A law that imposes disproportionate sentences, excludes meaningful safeguards, makes all offences non-bailable, contains no requirement of prior sanction, and hands additional coercive power to a police force with a troubled history is not a serious legislative response to a genuine social problem. It is a gesture — one that may yet prove deeply costly.

The lessons of Pakistan's blasphemy laws, of Section 295A's misuse in India, of the Asia Bibi case and the Salman Taseer assassination, and of Punjab's own history with the very legislation this amendment seeks to build upon, are not cautionary tales from another world. They are lessons from next door, and from our own recent past. Punjab's legislators would do well to remember them.

Author is an Advocate practising at Punjab and Haryana High Court. Views are personal.

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