uggested certain reforms to be made under Chapter VII of the Indian Penal Code.

Few
recommendations are discussed as follows:

The commission recommended that this chapter should not be confined only to Army, Navy and
Airforce but should apply to all the armed forces in the Union of India. Accordingly, it proposed to
change the heading of the chapter from offences relating to Army, Navy and Airforce to offences
relating to Armed Forces. The commission also suggested that the terms ‘Army’, ‘Navy’, ‘Air Force’
should be comprehensively defined under a new Section 130A.

The commission proposed to revise Section 131, the commission propounded that the punishment
of life imprisonment given in cases where mutiny is not committed in consequence of abetment or
where it is only an attempt to seduce an officer is ‘unduly heavy’. It proposed that, if any person
abets the committing of mutiny by any officer of the defence service personnel, and if mutiny is
committed as a consequence of such abetment be punished with death, or life imprisonment or
rigorous imprisonment of 14 years and also with fine. In any other case, the punishment should be
imprisonment of 10 years and fine.

Section 135 does not differentiate between cases when the abetment of desertion happens and
when the desertion takes place as a consequence of abetment. Accordingly, the commission
recommended that under Section 135 where the offence of desertion actually happens, the
punishment to be increased up to 5 years.

It recommended that existing Section 137 be omitted because the Section ‘does not appear to be of
any consequence’.