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The Indian Penal Code (IPC) is the official criminal code of
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...
. It is a comprehensive code intended to cover all substantive aspects of criminal law. The code was drafted on the recommendations of first law commission of India established in 1834 under the
Charter Act of 1833 The Government of India Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will 4 c 85), or the Charter Act 1833, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, later retitled as the Saint Helena Act 1833. It extended the royal charter granted to the East India Company for an ...
under the chairmanship of Thomas Babington Macaulay. It came into force in
British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
during the early
British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was him ...
period 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. After the partition of the British Indian Empire, the Indian Penal Code was inherited by India and Pakistan, where it continues independently as the Pakistan Penal Code. After the independece of
Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mo ...
from Pakistan, the code continued in force there. The Code was also adopted by the British colonial authorities in Colonial Burma, Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), the Straits Settlements (now part of Malaysia),
Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
and
Brunei Brunei ( , ), formally Brunei Darussalam ( ms, Negara Brunei Darussalam, Jawi: , ), is a country located on the north coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. Apart from its South China Sea coast, it is completely surrounded by th ...
, and remains the basis of the criminal codes in those countries.


History

The draft of the Indian Penal Code was prepared by the First Law Commission, chaired by 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 from
Edward Livingston Edward Livingston (May 28, 1764May 23, 1836) was an American jurist and statesman. He was an influential figure in the drafting of the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825, a civil code based largely on the Napoleonic Code. Livingston represented bot ...
'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 Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the for ...
. 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. The Code came into operation on 1 January 1862. 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.


Objective

The objective of this Act is to provide a general penal code for India. 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.


Structure

The Indian Penal Code of 1860, sub-divided 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: A detailed list of all IPC laws which include above is here. ''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.'' ''Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to the offence described in this section.'' * Section 377 The Delhi High Court on 2 July 2009 gave a liberal interpretation to this section and laid down that this section can not be used to punish an act of consensual sexual intercourse between two same sex individuals. * On 11 December 2013, Supreme Court of India over-ruled the judgment given by Delhi High court in 2009 and clarified that "Section 377, which holds same-sex relations unnatural, does not suffer from unconstitutionality". The Bench said: "We hold that Section 377 does not suffer from ... unconstitutionality and the declaration made by the Division Bench of the High Court is legally unsustainable." It, however, said: "Notwithstanding this verdict, the competent legislature shall be free to consider the desirability and propriety of deleting Section 377 from the statute book or amend it as per the suggestion made by Attorney-General G.E. Vahanvati." * On 8 January 2018, the Supreme Court agreed to reconsider its 2013 decision and after much deliberation agreed to decriminalise the parts of Section 377 that criminalised same sex relations on 6 September 2018. The judgement of Suresh Kumar Koushal v. Naz Foundation is overruled.


Attempt to Commit Suicide - Section 309

The Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code deals with suicide attempts, whereby attempting to commit suicide is punishable with an imprisonment 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 The Government of India ( ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...
in December 2014 decided to decriminalise attempts to commit 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. In an August 2015 ruling, the
Rajasthan High Court The Rajasthan High Court is the High Court of the state of Rajasthan. It was established on 29 August 1949 under the ''Rajasthan High Court Ordinance, 1949''. The seat of the court is at Jodhpur. The court has a sanctioned judge strength of 50. ...
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. 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."


Adultery - Section 497

The
Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code Adultery was a criminal offence under Chapter XX of the Indian Penal Code until it was quashed by the Supreme Court of India on 27 September 2018 as unconstitutional. The law dated from 1860. Under Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, which wa ...
has been criticised on the one hand for allegedly treating woman as the private property of her husband, and on the other hand for giving women complete protection against punishment for adultery. This section was unanimously struck down on 27 September 2018 by a five judge bench of the Supreme Court in case o
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.


Death penalty

Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (war against the Government of India), 132 (mutiny), 194 (false evidence to procure conviction for a capital offence), 302, 303 (murder)(303/ has been declared unconstitutional in the case of Mittu singh vs state of punjab), 305 (abetting suicide), 364A (kidnapping for ransom), 396 (banditry(Dacoity) with murder), 376A (rape), 376AB (Rape on woman under 12 years of age), 376DB (Gang rape on woman under twelve years of age), 376E (repeat offender) have death penalty as punishment. There is ongoing debate for abolishing capital punishment. Still major activists are debating on this topic.


Criminal justice reforms

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. The essence of the report was a perceived need for shift from an adversarial to an inquisitorial criminal justice system, based on the Continental European systems.


Amendments

The Code has been amended several times.


Acclaim

The Code is universally acknowledged as a cogently drafted code, ahead of its time. 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. Modern crimes involving technology unheard of during Macaulay's time fit easily within the Code mainly because of the broadness of the Code's drafting.


Cultural references

Some references to specific sections (called ''dafā/dafa'a'' in Hindi-Urdu, دفعہ or दफ़ा/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 Section 420 in the Indian Penal Code deals with ''Cheating'' and ''dishonestly inducing delivery of property''. The maximum punishment which can be awarded under this section is imprisonment for a term of 7 year and fine. Definitions :* Chea ...
which covers cheating. 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 Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, refers to the film industry based in Mumbai, engaged in production of motion pictures in Hindi language. The popular term Bollywood, is a portmanteau of "Bombay" ...
movies and regional
pulp literature Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazine ...
. '' Dafa 302'' was also the name of a Bollywood movie released in 1975. Similarly, '' Shree 420'' was the name of a 1955 Bollywood movie starring Raj Kapoor. and '' Chachi 420'' was a Bollywood movie released in 1997 starring Kamal Haasan.


See also

* Courts * Judiciary of India * Indian Evidence Act *
Government of India The Government of India ( ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...
* Law enforcement in India * Civil Procedure Code, 1908 * Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 * Administrative divisions of India * :Sections of the Indian Penal Code


References


Further reading

* * *


External links


The Indian Penal Code, 1860
- India Code, Government of India {{India topics Acts of the Parliament of India Criminal codes 1860 in British law 1860 in law 1860 in India