Haryana Assembly Passes Key Bills: Tougher Laws on Gambling, Match-Fixing, and Use of Dead Bodies for Protest:

Haryana Assembly in India passed a new bill on preventing public gambling that includes provisions for match-fixing where offenders will be imprisoned for performing horse racing match-fixing and spot-fixing. This assembly also passed a new bill for a person who terrorizes others using a dead body clone will be given an imprisonment beloning from 6 months to 3 years and a chance to fined a lakh. The bill was proposed on March 18 during Haryan's parliament session. New amendments include terms that suggest people who are caught participating in gambling in public areas such as bars or common gambling houses will be punished with 1 year imprisonment or a 10 000 INR fine or both.

The owner, keeper or an occupier of these gambling houses or people who are found financing these gambling houses will be imprisoned under a 3 to 5 years clause and will being fined a lakh INR.

Whoever decides to engage in match-fixing or spot-fixing in sports is punished with three to five years of imprisonment, and will be charged with a minimum fine of five lakh rupees.

A member of an organized crime syndicate will now be convicted to rigorous imprisonment for no less than three years, and at most five, as well as a minimum fine of five lakhs. Everyone else who is found participating in gambling or any other illegal activity under the act is subject to two to three years of imprisonment, with an additional ten thousand rupee fine, or both, when a person chooses not to disclose their identity or provides a false one.

An executive magistrate or any police officer of the gazetted rank with certainty has the jurisdiction to permit a policeman of at least a sub-inspector’s rank to search any premises or persons or all such premises, on hearing credible information or after such inquiry, as he might think desirable that the offence under this Act has been or is being committed.

Any such police official has authority to take into custody any individual without obtaining a warrant and may also confiscate any articles, valuables, etc., which are found within the area and are being utilized for gambling purposes. While discussing the bill, Congress’ Kaithal MLA Aditya Surjewala suggested it is overly simplistic and bad in its drafting, claiming that it possesses numerous mistakes.

He stated that the government ought to send it to a Select Committee of the House. Surjewala claimed that the most important part of the bill’s one Section does not cover wagering of many forms. He referred to some other states’ laws and argued, so the bill should be sent to the Select Committee of the Assembly. Gaming instruments such as gaming boards, cards, and dice are not described in the law.

This was the second reading of four bills passed by the Assembly on Wednesday evening. The remaining include the Haryana Honorable Disposal of Dead Body Bill, 2025. This Bill further states that no family member shall, by himself or through others, either directly or indirectly, or give authority to a person or people to use the corpse for demonstration purposes of any sort.

Any person using a corpse for the purposes of remonstration is punishable with imprisonment for a term not less than six months but may extend up to three years along with a fine which may extend up to one lakh rupees. The objects statement and reasons of the Bill state that this Bill seeks to provide that the last rites of a body must be given within the proper time frame and when a family abandons the body for it to not receive last rites, a public authority shall perform the last rites.

Congress MLA B B Batra said Section 6 allows said far too broad an authority to the police. A police officer may assume from his personal knowledge or other information that a dead body is anticipated to be used by a family member or group of persons for remonstration and such an officer may take over such dead bodies.

“What is the expression 'personal knowledge' of the officer,” Batra said, asking that such words be deleted. Congress MLA Geeta Bhukkal said no family in this day and age of modern etiquette, irrespective of the cause of death, wishes to see the corpse of their loved one throw on the streets for public protest.

She stated that the family members in grief must not have to juggle between mourning a loved one and dealing with the police simultaneously. Following a number of recommendations from the opposition Congress, party head Bhupinder Singh Hooda said the measure ought to go to the House Select Committee.