A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court is examining whether the state organised-crime statutes survive Section 111 at all. The argument put to it is that Parliament, having legislated on organised crime in a central code, now occupies the field, so the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986 is repugnant to it under Article 254. The Court has added the Union of India as a party, and its answer will reach the equivalent Acts in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi and Karnataka.
This article sets out what organised crime under BNS Section 111 requires, what it punishes, and how a Section 111 case differs from one under MCOCA.
Whether Section 111 applies at all turns on what a court has already done with the group’s past, not on how serious the present offence looks. Four men run a vehicle-theft operation across two districts, stripping cars and reselling the parts, and the police register a case against all four under Section 111.
Three of them have long police records: several FIRs, a string of arrests, one old acquittal. The investigating officer treats that history as the continuing unlawful activity the section speaks of and adds the organised crime charge on top of the theft sections.
On that record the charge does not stand. The Explanation to Section 111(1) counts charge-sheets that a competent court has taken cognizance of, and it needs more than one of them inside the preceding ten years. FIRs are not charge-sheets, and arrests are not cognizance. Only one of the four had a charge-sheet in that window, so the thefts stay chargeable on their own sections while the syndicate charge falls away. The reason sits in the definition.
The definition of organised crime under BNS Section 111
The definition has two halves and a charge needs both. There must be an organised crime syndicate, which the Explanation describes as a group of two or more persons who, acting either singly or jointly, as a syndicate or gang indulge in any continuing unlawful activity. And that activity must be carried on to obtain direct or indirect material benefit, including a financial benefit, by use of violence, threat of violence, intimidation, coercion, or by any other unlawful means.
What makes the provision new is not the wording, which Maharashtra had used since 1999, but the reach. The Indian Penal Code contained no offence of organised crime. A state that wanted one had to enact its own, which is why Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat and Delhi each did, and why a syndicate operating in a state without such an Act faced only the individual offences it committed. Section 111 puts the offence in the general criminal law, so it runs everywhere. For the pre-2024 position and the categories of conduct the term has traditionally covered, see our earlier piece on organised crime in India.
Section 111 sits in Chapter VI of the Sanhita, among the offences affecting life. It is cognizable and non-bailable, and it is triable by the Court of Session. Section 112 sits immediately after it and creates a lower tier, petty organised crime, for gang conduct that does not meet the Section 111 threshold.
Section 111 needs two charge-sheets and cognizance within ten years
Section 111 does not attract unless more than one charge-sheet has already been filed against the syndicate before a competent court within the preceding ten years, and that court has taken cognizance. The activity must itself be a cognizable offence punishable with three years or more. MCOCA Section 2(1)(d) sets the same condition in the same words.
Three conditions follow, and each defeats a charge on its own. “More than one” means at least two, so a single prior charge-sheet will not do however serious it was. Cognizance is separate from filing, so a charge-sheet on the record of a court that has not applied its mind does not count. And the qualifying offence must clear the three-year bar, which keeps the less serious cognizable offences out of the count.
The Kerala High Court applied that arithmetic in the first reported decision on the section. In Muhammad Rasheed v State of Kerala, decided in August 2024, C.S. Dias J held at paragraph 17 that Section 111(1) requires continuing unlawful activity “in respect of which more than one charge-sheets have been filed before a competent Court within the preceding period of ten years”. No charge sheet had been filed against the petitioner in any court in that decade, so the Court held Section 111(1) prima facie not attracted and granted bail.
The Madhya Pradesh High Court reached the same place from the other direction in 2026. In Tanmay v State of Madhya Pradesh, Section 111 had been added to charges under Sections 109 and 115 of the Sanhita and the Arms Act after an alleged assault in which a co-accused fired a country-made pistol. Ramkumar Choubey J held that “criminal antecedents, by themselves, cannot automatically justify the invocation of Section 111 of the BNS unless the ingredients of the offence contemplated therein are otherwise fulfilled”, found the order adding the section rested substantially on those antecedents alone, and granted bail.
For anyone defending a Section 111 case, that reorders the first day’s work. The question is not what the accused allegedly did last month, but what a court has already taken cognizance of, how often, and when. Those records either exist or they do not, and investigative material about the current offence cannot supply them.
Activities that qualify under Section 111(1)
Section 111(1) lists the activities that qualify, and the list runs from kidnapping, robbery, vehicle theft, extortion, land grabbing and contract killing through to cyber-crimes, trafficking in persons, drugs, weapons or illicit goods or services, and human trafficking for prostitution or ransom. Economic offence is one of the listed heads and the Explanation defines it separately, taking in criminal breach of trust, forgery, counterfeiting of currency notes, bank notes and Government stamps, hawala transactions, and mass-marketing fraud or any scheme to defraud several persons.
That list is the real drafting change, and it cuts both ways rather than simply widening the offence. MCOCA named none of these activities: Section 2(1)(e) defines organised crime in general words, as continuing unlawful activity pursued “with the objective of gaining pecuniary benefits, or gaining undue economic or other advantage for himself or any other person or promoting insurgency”. Cyber fraud and hawala already fell inside those words unlisted, and promoting insurgency, which MCOCA covers expressly, has no place in Section 111 at all. What Parliament changed was the technique, from an open description to an enumerated catalogue, and one commentator’s objection is that the catalogue is loose enough to blur the line between organised crime and serious crime committed by a group. The statutes diverge sharply on money: Section 111(2)(a) sets a minimum fine of ten lakh rupees where the organised crime causes death, against one lakh in MCOCA Section 3(1)(i).
Punishment and procedure for organised crime under BNS Section 111
Section 111 punishes by role, on a scale running from three years at the bottom to death at the top. Where the organised crime has resulted in the death of any person, sub-section (2)(a) prescribes death or imprisonment for life, with a minimum fine of ten lakh rupees. In any other case, sub-section (2)(b) prescribes not less than five years, extending to imprisonment for life, with a minimum fine of five lakh rupees.
The sub-sections below that reach everyone standing behind the principal offender. Sub-section (3) covers abetment, conspiracy, attempt, and knowingly facilitating the commission of an organised crime, at five years to life with a five lakh rupee minimum fine. Sub-section (4) sets the same range for membership of an organised crime syndicate, which means membership is punished as heavily as facilitation of a specific crime.
Three further sub-sections deal with what happens around the offence rather than in it. Sub-section (5) punishes harbouring or concealing a member of a syndicate at three years to life with a five lakh rupee minimum fine, and carves out the offender’s spouse. Sub-section (6) punishes possession of property derived from an organised crime at three years to life with a two lakh rupee minimum. Sub-section (7) is the narrowest and the only one with a ceiling short of life: possessing, on behalf of a syndicate member, property that cannot be satisfactorily accounted for, punished with three to ten years and a minimum fine of one lakh rupees.
The procedure is where Section 111 parts company with the special Acts, and the reason is structural rather than deliberate. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita defines offences, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita supplies the procedure, and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam supplies the law of evidence. MCOCA does all three inside a single Act: it creates the offence and then rewrites the rules of investigation, evidence, bail and trial that apply to it. Because Section 111 is only an offence, a case under it is investigated, tried and bailed exactly like any other Sessions case, and every one of MCOCA’s procedural departures is absent.
Why a confession to the police is inadmissible in a Section 111 case
A confession made to a police officer cannot be proved against an accused charged under Section 111, because the Sanhita created no exception to the general bar in the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam. MCOCA did create one. Section 18 of that Act makes a confession admissible where it is recorded by a police officer not below the rank of Superintendent of Police, in writing or on a mechanical device, and the Supreme Court held in Zakir Abdul Mirajkar v State of Maharashtra (2022) that the word “rank” describes a class rather than a post, so an Additional Superintendent of Police and a Deputy Commissioner of Police both fall inside it.
Bail divides the two statutes just as sharply. MCOCA Section 21(4) bars release unless the public prosecutor has been heard and the court is satisfied both that there are reasonable grounds for believing the accused is not guilty and that he is not likely to commit any offence while on bail. Those conditions are cumulative, and together they require a court to reach an affirmative view of innocence before it can grant bail at all. Section 111 carries no equivalent, so bail is decided on ordinary principles under the Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, and the ordinary route to anticipatory bail stays open too.
Two more pieces of MCOCA machinery have no counterpart. Section 5 constitutes Special Courts to try offences under that Act, while a Section 111 case goes to the ordinary Court of Session. Section 14 authorises the interception of wire, electronic and oral communication and makes the resulting evidence admissible, which the Sanhita does not replicate for organised crime.
Prior approval and sanction under MCOCA
MCOCA places three ranks of police officer between a complaint and a conviction, and Section 111 places none. Section 23(1)(a) provides that no information about the commission of an offence of organised crime shall even be recorded by a police officer without the prior approval of an officer not below the rank of Deputy Inspector General of Police. The filter operates before the FIR exists, not after it.
Section 23(1)(b) then bars any officer below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police from investigating, and Section 23(2) provides that no Special Court shall take cognizance without the previous sanction of an officer not below the rank of Additional Director General of Police. A MCOCA prosecution therefore has to clear a senior officer at registration, a second at investigation and a third before the court can act on it.
Under Section 111 a station house officer registers the case, the officer to whom it is assigned investigates it, and the Court of Session takes cognizance without anyone’s sanction. Nothing filters the charge administratively at all. Every check that MCOCA distributed across three ranks of the police hierarchy now rests on the definition alone, which is why the High Courts have ended up doing the filtering themselves, one bail application at a time.
The Rajasthan High Court made that point squarely in Vinay Baghla v State of Rajasthan, decided in May 2026. Police had arrested the accused carrying ATM cards and banking documents belonging to several people, and the investigation alleged cyber fraud with proceeds routed through multiple accounts and cryptocurrency. Farjand Ali J held that the section demands prior charge-sheets, judicial cognisance, continuity of criminal conduct and proof of a syndicate, not merely several accused defrauding people together, and that “the invocation of Section 111 BNS represents an impermissible expansion of an extraordinary penal provision beyond the limits intended by Parliament”. The organised crime charge was quashed while the prosecution continued on the remaining provisions, among them the conspiracy charge under Section 61, which is usually what survives when Section 111 is struck out.
Charging a case under MCOCA or under Section 111
Both statutes are in force, so in a state with its own organised-crime Act the prosecutor chooses. The Sanhita repealed the Indian Penal Code; it did not repeal MCOCA, the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters Act, or their counterparts in Karnataka, Gujarat and Delhi. The same facts can support a charge under either, and often under both.
Where a special Act exists, the prosecution usually has reason to prefer it. MCOCA buys the confession provision in Section 18, the bail bar in Section 21(4), the interception power in Section 14 and a Special Court to try the case. Those are advantages of proof and of custody, not of definition, and a prosecutor in Mumbai gives them up by charging Section 111 instead.
Section 111 earns its place in two situations. The first is geographic: in the many states that never enacted an organised-crime statute, it is the only organised crime offence available, and before 2024 there was none at all. The second is the enumerated list. A prosecutor building a case on card skimming, a mass-marketing fraud or a hawala channel can point to the words of Section 111(1) rather than argue that the conduct falls inside a general description written in 1999.
For an accused, the difference runs the other way, and it is substantial. A Section 111 charge means bail on ordinary principles instead of the twin conditions, no confession to a police officer coming into evidence, no reverse burden, and an ordinary Sessions court rather than a designated one. Two charges arising from one set of facts can therefore sit in very different procedural worlds, and which one the accused is in depends on a decision taken by the prosecution.
Section 112 is the release valve underneath all of this. Gang conduct that cannot clear the Section 111 gate, theft, snatching, cheating, unauthorised ticketing, unauthorised betting or gambling, or selling public examination papers, is punishable as petty organised crime with one to seven years and fine. The section defines theft broadly enough to take in pickpocketing, card skimming, shoplifting, cargo theft and ATM theft. MCOCA has no equivalent lower tier, so this is one place where the Sanhita reaches conduct the special Acts left to the ordinary offences.
Whether the state gangster Acts survive Section 111
That choice may not survive the year, because the Supreme Court is considering whether the state Acts remain valid at all. The question is pending and undecided, and until it is answered the state statutes stay enforceable.
The argument is one of repugnancy under Article 254. Criminal law sits in the Concurrent List, so where Parliament and a state legislature both occupy a field, the central law prevails unless the state law is saved. Counsel has put it to the Court that Section 111 and the UP Gangsters Act occupy the same field with an irreconcilable conflict between them, and that Parliament intended a comprehensive and exhaustive code. The bench has framed the enquiry around the three tests from Forum for People’s Collective Efforts v State of West Bengal: direct conflict, parliamentary intent to enact an exhaustive code, and occupation of the identical field. A two-judge bench took the point up in Siraj Ahmad Khan v State of Uttar Pradesh; it now sits before a three-judge bench of the Chief Justice, Bagchi and Pancholi JJ in Irfan Solanki v State of Uttar Pradesh, with the Union of India joined and the reference made because the outcome affects the equivalent statutes in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Delhi and Karnataka. In a separate matter in December 2024 the Court had already observed that the UP Gangsters Act “appears to be draconian”.
What a practitioner does in the meantime is narrow but worth doing. Proceedings under the state Acts continue and have to be met on their own terms, and the repugnancy point does not preserve itself: it is available only to a party who raises it on the record now, rather than one who waits to see how the Court rules.
Frequently asked questions
Is MCOCA still valid after BNS Section 111?
Yes. The Sanhita repealed the Indian Penal Code and left the state organised-crime statutes untouched, so MCOCA, the UP Gangsters Act and their counterparts in Karnataka, Gujarat and Delhi remain in force. Their validity is under challenge before a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court on the ground that Section 111 has occupied the field, but that question is pending.
What is the punishment for organised crime under BNS Section 111?
Where the organised crime has resulted in death, Section 111(2)(a) prescribes death or imprisonment for life with a minimum fine of ten lakh rupees. In every other case, Section 111(2)(b) prescribes five years to life with a minimum fine of five lakh rupees. Abetment, conspiracy and syndicate membership carry the same five-years-to-life range; harbouring a member and holding the proceeds carry three years to life.
Can a first-time offender be charged under Section 111 BNS?
No, not on the organised crime limb. The Explanation requires more than one charge-sheet against the syndicate filed before a competent court within the preceding ten years, with cognizance taken, so an accused with no such record falls outside the definition. The Kerala High Court applied that reasoning in Muhammad Rasheed.
Is it easier to get bail under Section 111 BNS than under MCOCA?
In principle yes. Section 111 carries no equivalent of MCOCA Section 21(4), under which the court must be satisfied both that there are reasonable grounds for believing the accused is not guilty and that he will not offend on bail. Bail under Section 111 is decided on ordinary principles under the Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, though the offence remains non-bailable.
What is the difference between Section 111 and Section 112 of the BNS?
Section 111 requires a syndicate engaged in continuing unlawful activity with the charge-sheet history the Explanation describes, and punishes with five years to life or death. Section 112 covers petty organised crime, meaning theft, snatching, cheating, unauthorised ticketing or betting and similar acts by a member of a group or gang, at one to seven years and fine. Section 112 sets no charge-sheet precondition, which is why it catches gang conduct Section 111 cannot reach.
References
Statutes
- The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (45 of 2023), sections 111 and 112, and the Explanation to section 111(1). Bare text checked against the Bureau of Police Research and Development handbook on the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 and the reproduced bare act
- The Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (Mah. XXX of 1999), sections 2(1)(d), 2(1)(e), 2(1)(f), 3, 5, 14, 18, 21(4) and 23
- The Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986, and the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Rules, 2021
- The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (46 of 2023); the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (47 of 2023); the Constitution of India, Article 254
Cases
- Muhammad Rasheed v State of Kerala, High Court of Kerala, 13 August 2024, C.S. Dias J, paragraphs 17 and 18 (report)
- Vinay Baghla v State of Rajasthan, 2026:RJ-JD:21961, High Court of Rajasthan, 21 May 2026, Farjand Ali J (report)
- Tanmay v State of Madhya Pradesh, 2026 LiveLaw (MP) 307, M.Cr.C. No. 32864 of 2026, Ramkumar Choubey J (report)
- Zakir Abdul Mirajkar v State of Maharashtra, 2022 SCC OnLine SC 1092, Supreme Court of India, 24 August 2022 (report)
- Irfan Solanki v State of Uttar Pradesh, W.P. (Crl.) No. 84 of 2026, and Siraj Ahmad Khan v State of Uttar Pradesh, W.P. (Crl.) No. 452 of 2024, Supreme Court of India, pending (reference to a three-judge bench, the repugnancy question)
- Forum for People’s Collective Efforts v State of West Bengal, on the tests for repugnancy under Article 254
- Supreme Court observation that the UP Gangsters Act “appears to be draconian”, December 2024 (report)
Commentary
This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult a qualified advocate before acting on any provision discussed here.