Every IPC section and what replaced it in the BNS
28 August 2026 · 9 min
The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita did not renumber the Indian Penal Code — it rewrote it. Some sections moved, some merged, some were split, and a few have no successor at all. Here is the mapping, and the traps in it.
Is the IPC still in force?
For offences committed on or before 30 June 2024, yes. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 applies to offences committed from 1 July 2024. Both codes therefore run side by side in every criminal court in India, and will for years — a chargesheet filed today may concern conduct under either.
This is why a chamber needs the mapping in both directions. A senior knows "420". A junior reads "318(4)" in a chargesheet and needs to know it is the old cheating provision.
What replaced Section 420 IPC?
Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property is now Section 318(4) of the BNS. The ingredients are substantially the same; the punishment is unchanged at up to seven years and a fine.
The mapping, for the sections that come up daily
| IPC | Offence | BNS |
|---|---|---|
| 302 | Murder | 103(1) |
| 304 | Culpable homicide not amounting to murder | 105 |
| 304A | Death by negligence | 106(1) |
| 307 | Attempt to murder | 109 |
| 323 | Voluntarily causing hurt | 115(2) |
| 324 | Hurt by dangerous weapon | 118(1) |
| 354 | Assault to outrage modesty | 74 |
| 376 | Rape | 64 |
| 379 | Theft | 303(2) |
| 392 | Robbery | 309(4) |
| 406 | Criminal breach of trust | 316(2) |
| 420 | Cheating | 318(4) |
| 498A | Cruelty by husband or relatives | 85 |
| 506 | Criminal intimidation | 351(2) and (3) |
| 509 | Insulting the modesty of a woman | 79 |
Where the mapping is not one to one
Three patterns cause most of the difficulty.
Merged sections. Several IPC provisions collapse into one BNS section with sub-clauses. Section 506 IPC becomes 351(2) and 351(3) BNS depending on the threat.
Split sections. Section 304 IPC divided by intention now falls across BNS 105 with different sentencing structures.
Sections with no successor. Section 377 IPC has no equivalent in the BNS. Section 124A, sedition, is replaced by Section 152 BNS with materially different ingredients — it is not a renumbering and should never be pleaded as one.
Why an automatic converter is dangerous
A tool that silently rewrites 420 as 318(4) will eventually rewrite 124A as 152 and put an advocate in front of a judge citing a provision whose ingredients they have not read.
Solon shows the mapping and the marginal notes of both provisions side by side, and marks where the ingredients differ. The lawyer decides. That is deliberate — the mapping was hand-verified for this reason, because a wrong one sends someone into court on the wrong section.
Solon holds the corpus this was written from. Every section, every mapping, and how later benches treated every authority. Open it on your own docket.
This is written for practising advocates and is not legal advice. Verify every provision and every citation against the source before relying on it.