Indian Penal Code / Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita
Scope
This domain tests general principles of criminal liability and specific offences, with the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 now the operative statute. Questions often ask you to identify the offence, the mens rea and the punishment, or to distinguish adjacent offences.
Core rules
- Liability requires actus reus plus mens rea (intention, knowledge or rashness), unless strict liability is imposed.
- General exceptions include mistake, accident, necessity, infancy, unsoundness of mind, intoxication, consent and private defence.
- BNS retains the IPC architecture: culpable homicide and murder provisions correspond to IPC ss.299-304; theft is s.303; cheating s.318; defamation s.356. New offences include organised crime (s.111), terrorism (s.113) and snatching (s.304).
- Common intention and common object make co-participants liable within the scope of the shared design.
Worked example
A, intending to kill B, fires at B but misses and kills C. Under the doctrine of transferred malice, A is liable for C's murder: the intention directed at B transfers to the actual victim. If A had only intended to frighten B and the gun discharged accidentally, the offence would be culpable homicide not amounting to murder, or possibly an accident defence.
Traps
Murder and culpable homicide are not synonyms; the special exceptions to murder (grave and sudden provocation, private defence, sudden fight) reduce the offence. Do not apply IPC section numbers mechanically when the BNS has renumbered them. Private defence must be proportionate and cannot be a pretext for revenge.