- Madhya Pradesh amended EOW powers from IPC 1860 to Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023
- EOW received 23,261 complaints from 2020 to June 2026, but few led to investigations
- Only 258 criminal cases registered and 9 charge sheets filed during that period
Nearly half a century has passed since Madhya Pradesh issued the notification defining the legal powers of its Economic Offences Wing, or EOW. The state government has now decided to amend that May 31, 1977 notification and bring it in line with the new criminal-law framework.
The Mohan Yadav Cabinet has approved an amendment to the Home Department's 1977 notification, enabling the EOW to proceed under the relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, instead of the corresponding sections of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. The Cabinet approved the amendment on August 25.
On paper, this is essentially a legal amendment necessitated by the transition from the IPC to the BNS. But behind this seemingly technical change lies a much bigger question.
Madhya Pradesh is giving its premier economic-crime investigation agency the powers of a new law. The question is whether the EOW will now be able to change its record and its pace as well. Figures placed before the state Assembly paint a startling picture thousands of complaints reach the EOW, only a small fraction move to preliminary or criminal investigation, even fewer reach the courts, and in some cases judgments take decades.
Between 2020 and June 2026, the Economic Offences Wing received a record 23,261 complaints, according to figures disclosed in a written reply in the Assembly on behalf of Chief Minister Dr Mohan Yadav. Of these, only 3,018 complaints were registered for further examination, while 756 were closed after scrutiny. Congress MLA Pratap Grewal, who raised the issue, asked what had happened to the remaining complaints and alleged that the figures themselves raised serious questions over the EOW's pace of investigation and disposal.
But there is an even more striking figure.
During this period, only 258 criminal cases were registered on the basis of these complaints, while charge sheets were filed before courts in just nine cases. In other words, the real story of Madhya Pradesh's fight against economic offences may not lie in how many complaints reach the EOW headquarters.
The real question is how many of these complaints actually complete the journey from complaint to inquiry, FIR, investigation, charge sheet, trial and conviction. At every stage, the number appears to shrink dramatically. This is not the first time the EOW's own figures have raised uncomfortable questions.
In February, NDTV reported how between 2020 and January 2026, the EOW had received 19,775 complaints relating to corruption and economic offences. Of these, only 2,624 complaints, or around 14 per cent, were formally registered, while criminal cases were registered in just 566 instances. That means only about 2.8 per cent of the total complaints resulted in an FIR or criminal case. Put differently, more than 97 per cent of complaints in that dataset did not reach the stage of criminal-case registration.
One of the questions raised in the Assembly referred to a complaint supported by an affidavit and 342 pages of documents that had been submitted to the EOW in June 2025. Instead of directly beginning an investigation into the allegations, the complaint was forwarded to the Urban Development and Housing Department for examination. The complainant argued that he had already approached the same department before turning to the EOW. Congress MLA Pankaj Upadhyay questioned whether sending a complaint back to the very department connected with the allegations could weaken independent scrutiny rather than strengthen it.
Another set of figures appears, at first glance, to tell a very different story. Between 2020 and 2025, courts delivered judgments in 70 criminal cases investigated by the EOW. Of these, 40 resulted in convictions while the accused were acquitted in 30. That puts the conviction rate at around 57 per cent among cases in which judgments were delivered.
A 57 per cent conviction rate may sound impressive. But the picture changes when one looks at how long it took for those judgments to arrive. In these 70 cases, the average time between registration of the case and the final court verdict was 13 years and seven months.
Some cases stretched across almost an entire generation.
A case registered in 1990 was decided 33 years later. A 1995 case took 28 years to conclude. A case dating back to 1996 was decided after 29 years, while another case from 1999 took 26 years to reach its conclusion.
Against this backdrop, the Cabinet's latest decision assumes significance. Updating the EOW's legal powers from the IPC framework to the BNS may remove an important legal gap. But the larger test will be whether the change also translates into faster scrutiny of complaints, quicker registration of cases, timely investigations and more charge sheets reaching courts. The law has now been updated. The bigger question is whether the numbers will improve too.
