Indian Penal Code
Erstwhile Penal code of Republic of India
The Indian Penal Code (IPC), was the official criminal code of the Republic of India, inherited from British India after independence. It remained in force until it was repealed and replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) in December 2023, which came into effect on July 1, 2024. 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 1833 under the chairmanship of Thomas Babington Macaulay. It came into force in the Indian 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. While in force, the IPC was amended several times and was supplemented by other criminal provisions.
Despite promulgation of the BNS, litigation for all relevant offences committed before 1 July 2024 will continue to be registered under the IPC.
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 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.
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This entry incorporates text from “Indian Penal Code” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.