Indian Penal Code,

The Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC) was India's substantive criminal code for over 160 years. Drafted under the chairmanship of Thomas Babington Macaulay and enacted in 1860, it came into force on 1 January 1862 and defined the vast majority of criminal offences prosecuted in India until 1 July 2024, when it was superseded by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS).

The act runs to 511 sections, organised into 23 chapters (26 with the amendment inserts 5A, 9A and 20A), covering everything from offences against the State and the human body to property, documents, marriage and defamation. Although the BNS has replaced the IPC prospectively, the IPC continues to apply to offences that were committed before 1 July 2024 — so both codes remain in active use in Indian courts for years to come.

This page indexes the full text of every IPC section, retained for reference, research and pending prosecutions. Use the search above to find a section by keyword (e.g. “murder”, “cheating”) or by section number. Use the BNS converter to find the BNS provision that corresponds to a given IPC section.