Question

Under Section 105 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023, what is now a mandatory requirement for the process of search and seizure conducted by the police?

• A. The documentation of the entire search and seizure process via audio-video electronic recording
• B. The presence of at least five local residents as independent witnesses
• C. The presence of a Judicial Magistrate during the search
• D. The acquisition of a signed written confession from the occupant of the premises

Hint:

A major theme of the BNSS is "Digital Criminal Procedure." Search and seizure + BNSS usually points toward audio-video recording requirements.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

Section 105 of the BNSS, 2023 is best understood as a technology-driven transparency reform, and it helps to see what problem it was designed to solve before matching it to an option.

1. The old concern: searches and seizures conducted by police were often challenged later on the ground that the recovery was fabricated, planted, or not properly witnessed, since the only record was often a paper memo prepared by the police themselves.
2. The BNSS solution: Section 105 requires that the search and seizure process be captured through audio-video electronic recording, creating an independent, contemporaneous record of the entire process, which strengthens the evidentiary value of the recovery at trial.
3. What it is not: it is not a rule about a fixed number of local witnesses, it is not a rule requiring a Judicial Magistrate to attend every search, and it has nothing to do with extracting a written confession from the person occupying the premises.

Since the reform is specifically about recording technology rather than witness numbers, magisterial presence, or confessions, the option describing audio-video recording is the one that matches Section 105.

The correct answer is the documentation of the entire search and seizure process via audio-video electronic recording.

Answer 2

A useful way to approach this question is to notice that three of the four options describe safeguards involving people (witnesses, a magistrate, a confession-giver), while only one option describes a safeguard involving technology. Section 105 can then be tested against that split.

1. People-based safeguards in general criminal procedure: Indian criminal procedure has traditionally relied on human safeguards for search and seizure, independent witnesses from the locality being asked to attest to what was found. This is the older model.
2. Five local residents: the specific number five does not correspond to the witness requirement traditionally used in search procedure, and more importantly, Section 105's reform is not framed around witness numbers at all.
3. A Judicial Magistrate's presence: requiring a magistrate to physically attend every police search would be impractical and is not how Section 105 is structured, magisterial oversight in the BNSS scheme operates through other mechanisms, not personal attendance at the search itself.
4. A signed confession: obtaining a confession from the occupant is not a component of a lawful search and seizure procedure at all, it belongs to an entirely different part of criminal procedure.
5. The technology-based safeguard: Section 105 replaces reliance on witnesses or magisterial presence with a direct, technological safeguard, mandatory audio-video electronic recording of the entire search and seizure process.

Recognising that the BNSS shifted from a witness-based model toward a recording-based model immediately points to the correct option.

So the correct answer is the documentation of the entire search and seizure process via audio-video electronic recording.