Indian Penal Code Pdf File Download
Kody Baril
The Indian Penal Code (IPC) was the official criminal code in the Republic of India, inherited from British India after independence, until it was replaced by Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita in December 2023. It was a comprehensive code intended to cover all substantive aspects of criminal law. The code was drafted on the recommendations of the first Law Commission of India established in 1834 under the Charter Act of 1833 under the chairmanship of Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay.[1][2][3] It came into force on the subcontinent during the British rule in 1862. However, it did not apply automatically in the Princely states, which had their own courts and legal systems until the 1940s. The code has since been amended several times and is now supplemented by other criminal provisions.
The draft of the Indian Penal Code was prepared by the First Law Commission, chaired by Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1834 and was submitted to Governor-General of India Council in 1835. Based on a simplified codification of the law of England at the time, elements were also derived from the Napoleonic Code and Edward Livingston's Louisiana Civil Code of 1825. The first final draft of the Indian Penal Code was submitted to the Governor-General of India in Council in 1837, but the draft was again revised. The drafting was completed in 1850 and the code was presented to the Legislative Council in 1856, but it did not take its place on the statute book of British India until a generation later, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The draft then underwent a very careful revision at the hands of Barnes Peacock, who later became the first chief justice of the Calcutta High Court, and the future puisne judges of the Calcutta High Court, who were members of the Legislative Council, and was passed into law on 6 October 1860.[5] The code came into operation on 1 January 1862. Lord Macaulay did not survive to see the penal code he wrote come into force, having died near the end of 1859. The code came into force in Jammu and Kashmir on 31 October 2019, by virtue of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, and replaced the state's Ranbir Penal Code.[6]
The objective of this Act is to provide a general penal code for India.[7] Though not the initial objective, the Act does not repeal the penal laws which were in force at the time of coming into force in India. This was done because the code does not contain all the offences and it was possible that some offences might have still been left out of the code, which were not intended to be exempted from penal consequences. Though this code consolidates the whole of the law on the subject and is exhaustive on the matters in respect of which it declares the law, many more penal statutes governing various offences have been created in addition to the code.
The Indian Penal Code of 1860, subdivided into 23 chapters, comprises 511 sections. The code starts with an introduction, provides explanations and exceptions used in it, and covers a wide range of offences. The Outline is presented in the following table:[8]
Whoever, voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment of life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.
The Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code deals with suicide attempts, whereby attempting to die by suicide is punishable with imprisonment of up to one year. Considering long-standing demand and recommendations of the Law Commission of India, which has repeatedly endorsed the repeal of this section, the Government of India in December 2014 decided to decriminalise attempts to die by suicide by dropping Section 309 of the IPC from the statute book. In February 2015, the Legislative Department of the Ministry of Law and Justice was asked by the Government to prepare a draft Amendment Bill in this regard.[15]
In an August 2015 ruling, the Rajasthan High Court made the Jain practice of undertaking voluntary death by fasting at the end of a person's life, known as Santhara, punishable under sections 306 and 309 of the IPC. This led to some controversy, with some sections of the Jain community urging the Prime Minister to move the Supreme Court against the order.[16][17] On 31 August 2015, the Supreme Court admitted the petition by Akhil Bharat Varshiya Digambar Jain Parishad and granted leave. It stayed the decision of the High Court and lifted the ban on the practice.
In 2017 the new Mental Healthcare Act of India was signed. Section 115(1) of the act effectively decriminalised suicide, saying "anyone who attempts suicide shall be presumed, unless proved otherwise, to have severe stress and shall not be tried and punished under the said Code."
The Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code has been criticised on the one hand for allegedly treating women as the private property of her husband, and on the other hand for giving women complete protection against punishment for adultery.[18][19] This section was unanimously struck down on 27 September 2018 by a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court in case of Joseph Shine v. Union of India as being unconstitutional and demeaning to the dignity of women. Adultery continues to be a ground for seeking divorce in a Civil Court, but is no longer a criminal offence in India.
In 2003, the Malimath Committee submitted its report recommending several far-reaching penal reforms including separation of investigation and prosecution (similar to the CPS in the UK) to streamline criminal justice system.[21] The essence of the report was a perceived need for a shift from an adversarial to an inquisitorial criminal justice system, based on the Continental European systems.
The code is universally acknowledged as a cogently drafted code, ahead of its time[citation needed]. It has substantially survived for over 150 years in several jurisdictions without major amendments. Nicholas Phillips, Justice of Supreme Court of United Kingdom applauded the efficacy and relevance of IPC while commemorating 150 years of IPC.[24] Modern crimes involving technology unheard of during Macaulay's time fit easily within the code[citation needed] mainly because of the broadness of the code's drafting.
Some references to specific sections (called dafā/dafa'a in Hindi-Urdu, دفعہ or दफ़/दफ़आ) of the IPC have entered popular speech in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. For instance, con men are referred to as 420s (chaar-sau-bees in Hindi-Urdu) after Section 420 which covers cheating.[25] Similarly, specific reference to section 302 ("tazīrāt-e-Hind dafā tīn-sau-do ke tehet sazā-e-maut", "punishment of death under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code"), which covers the death penalty, have become part of common knowledge in the region due to repeated mentions of it in Bollywood movies and regional pulp literature.[26][27] Dafa 302 was also the name of a Bollywood movie released in 1975.[28] Similarly, Shree 420 was the name of a 1955 Bollywood movie starring Raj Kapoor.[29] and Chachi 420 was a Bollywood movie released in 1997 starring Kamal Haasan.[30]
Before the advent of the British, the penal law prevailing in India, for the most part, was the Muhammedan law. For the first few years of its administration, the East India Company did not interfere with the criminal law of the country and although in 1772, during the administration of Warren Hastings, the Company for the first time interfered, and henceforth till 1861, from time to time, the British Government did alter the Muhammedan law, yet up to 1862, when the Indian Penal Code came into operation, the Muhammedan law was undoubtedly the basis of the criminal law excepting in the presidency towns. The epoch of the administration of Muslim criminal law in India extended for a considerable period and has even supplied many terms for the vocabulary of Indian law.
The chapter deals with all kinds of offences which can be committed against the human body, from the very lowest degree i.e. simple hurt or assault to the gravest ones which include murder, kidnapping and rape.
These crimes are defined and punished under Chapter XVII and range from Section 378 which defines theft, to Section 462 which prescribes punishment for the offence of breaking upon an entrusted property. The offences that are dealt with under this chapter include, among others, theft, extortion, robbery, dacoity, cheating and forgery.
The definitions and punishment for this category of offences are provided in Chapter VIII which ranges from Section 141 to 160. This chapter lays down the acts which are considered to be criminal in nature because they disturb and destroy public tranquillity and order. This chapter includes offences like being a member of an unlawful assembly, rioting and affray.
Chapter VI, which deals with offences of this nature, and includes Sections 121 to 130 are some of the most rigorous penal provisions of the entire code. This includes the offence of waging war against the state under Section 121 and the much-debated, criticised, and abused offence of Sedition under Section 124A. The offence defined under this Section has been much maligned as it was used by the British to prosecute many freedom fighters; it has also been used post-independence to silence critics of the government and continues to date which is why many experts advocate repealing the same.
Sections 76-106 (Chapter IV) embody the general exceptions which are exceptional circumstances where the offender can escape criminal liability. A basic example in this context is the Right of Private Defence (Section 96-106). Other concepts that are elaborated upon in this chapter include Insanity, Necessity, Consent, and acts of children below a certain age.
The IPC has been successful by and large in its attempt to prosecute and punish individuals who commit the crimes that are defined in this Code, but like Sedition there have been certain other provisions that have invited scrutiny time and again. Some of these provisions are as follows:
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