TL;DR: This is a selective, verified IPC-to-BNS mapping table for the sections that come up most often in practice, not all 511 IPC sections. Most of the table is pure renumbering, but a separate section flags the offences where the substance changed: new offences with no IPC ancestor, offences merged or narrowed, and IPC provisions with no BNS successor at all, including Section 377 and Section 497.
On this page
- How to use this table
- High-frequency IPC to BNS mapping table
- The trap: same number, different offence
- Where the substance changed, not just the number
- Offences with no IPC ancestor
- IPC offences with no BNS successor
- Which code applies: the date-of-offence rule
- Repeal and savings: the exact provisions
- Frequently asked questions
How to use this table
A mapping table has to work in two directions, and most published tables only do one of them well.
Old to new (IPC to BNS). You are reading a pre-1 July 2024 FIR, judgment, or client file with an IPC section on it, and you need to know what the equivalent BNS provision is called today, so you can find current commentary, current bail case law, or search a database that indexes by the new numbering.
New to old (BNS to IPC). You are reading a post-1 July 2024 charge-sheet or FIR with a BNS section on it, and you need the IPC equivalent to pull the deep body of case law built up over decades under the old number, because that precedent still matters for the underlying principle even though the section number changed.
The table below is built old-to-new: the left column is the IPC section, the right column is its BNS equivalent. To go the other way, scan the right column. Every row lists the actual offence name so you are not matching on number alone, which is exactly the habit that causes mis-citation once the numbers stop lining up. If you are working through an actual judgment rather than a bare section list, our guide on how to read and brief an Indian judgment covers how to separate the statutory holding from the section number a court happened to cite.
A general note before the table: the IPC had 511 sections. The BNS has 358. That is not because 153 offences vanished. Numbers were consolidated, some provisions were merged into a single section with subsections, and the drafting is denser. A lower BNS number does not mean a narrower offence.
High-frequency IPC to BNS mapping table
This table covers the sections that actually turn up in day-to-day criminal practice: the offences charged most often in FIRs, the ones bail lawyers argue over, and the ones cited in judgments you will be reading for years. It is not a substitute for a full 511-row conversion chart, and it is not trying to be one. Every row below was checked against the BNS text hosted at devgan.in’s bare act reproduction or against multiple independent legal-practice sources reporting the same mapping, and cross-checked for offence-title match rather than accepted on a secondary source’s word alone. Where a mapping could not be confirmed this way, it has been left out rather than guessed.
| Offence | IPC section | BNS section |
|---|---|---|
| Murder | 302 | 103(1) |
| Murder by group of five or more on discriminatory grounds | (see mob lynching, below) | 103(2) |
| Rape, definition | 375 | 63 |
| Punishment for rape | 376 | 64 |
| Gang rape | 376D | 70 |
| Attempt to murder | 307 | 109 |
| Culpable homicide not amounting to murder | 304 | 105 |
| Causing death by negligence | 304A | 106 |
| Dowry death | 304B | 80 |
| Abetment of suicide | 306 | 108 |
| Common intention (each liable as if acting alone) | 34 | 3(5) |
| Criminal conspiracy | 120A / 120B | 61 |
| Every member of unlawful assembly liable for offence in prosecution of common object | 149 | 190 |
| Assault or criminal force to a woman to outrage her modesty | 354 | 74 |
| Cruelty by husband or his relatives | 498A | 85 |
| Kidnapping, definition | 359 | 137 |
| Abduction, definition | 362 | 138 |
| Trafficking of persons | 370 | 143 |
| Robbery | 392 | 309 |
| Dacoity | 395 | 310 |
| Theft | 379 | 303(2) |
| Criminal breach of trust | 406 | 316(2) |
| Cheating | 420 | 318(4) |
| Forgery | 465 | 336(2) |
| Using a forged document as genuine | 471 | 340(2) |
| Act rashly or negligently endangering life or personal safety | 336 | 125 |
| Criminal trespass and house-trespass | 447 / 448 | 329 |
| Defamation | 499 / 500 | 356 |
| Promoting enmity between groups | 153A | 196 |
| Deliberate act to outrage religious feelings | 295A | 299 |
| Criminal intimidation | 503 / 506 | 351 |
Sources: BNS bare act text at devgan.in, cross-checked against title and operative text for each section listed. Attempt to murder, dowry death, robbery, dacoity, and criminal breach of trust additionally cross-checked against practitioner mapping references (Vakeel360, iPleaders, ApniLaw) reporting the same section, all citing 1 July 2024 as the effective date. Always verify the specific section against the statute at indiacode.nic.in or Indian Kanoon before relying on it in a filing, since consolidated provisions can carry subsection numbering that a mapping table this compressed cannot always capture in full. The general discipline of preferring the bare act over a secondary compilation is the same one covered in our piece on primary versus secondary legal sources.
A cruelty charge under Section 85 BNS (the old Section 498A IPC) is a good illustration of why the offence name in the table matters more than the number. Both provisions have generated extensive litigation over what counts as “cruelty,” and courts scrutinise these charges closely for misuse; our piece on Section 498A misuse and quashing covers the standard courts apply, and that standard carries forward to Section 85 BNS because the operative language did not change.
This table stops well short of 511 rows on purpose. Padding a mapping table with sections nobody litigates does not make it more useful, and a wrong entry buried in a long table is more dangerous than a short table that only covers what a working lawyer actually needs. If your matter turns on a section not listed here, verify it directly against the BNS text before you cite it. Niyam’s search indexes judgments and statute text with awareness of both the IPC and BNS numbering, which is a faster way to confirm an unusual section than working through a static table by hand.
The trap: same number, different offence
Look at row 25 above. IPC Section 336 is “act rashly or negligently endangering the life or personal safety of others.” BNS Section 336 is forgery. Same number, two completely unrelated offences, in force in the same country depending only on when the alleged conduct happened.
This is not a one-off coincidence. The BNS renumbered from scratch rather than inserting new sections around the old sequence, so any given number now has a roughly one-in-three-hundred chance of meaning something in the BNS that has nothing to do with what it meant in the IPC. A junior associate who searches “Section 336” without specifying the code will pull two unrelated bodies of case law and may not notice the mismatch, especially if both sets of results use similar procedural language.
The practical discipline: never cite a bare number. Always write the section with the Act name attached, “Section 336 BNS” or “Section 336 IPC,” in every pleading, every note, and every internal memo. It costs four extra characters and it is the single cheapest safeguard against mis-citation in a dual-track system that will run for years. It is also exactly the kind of error an AI drafting tool can introduce silently if the underlying research was not grounded in the actual statute text; see our piece on a lawyer’s duty to verify AI output for why this checking step cannot be skipped even when the first draft looks fluent.
Where the substance changed, not just the number
This is the part a pure renumbering table cannot give you, and it is the part that actually matters for charging and defence strategy. Below are provisions where the BNS did more than relabel the IPC’s number: it merged offences, narrowed one, changed what triggers it, or built in a materially different structure.
| Change | IPC provision | What changed under BNS |
|---|---|---|
| ✗ Not a plain renumbering | Section 124A (sedition) | Replaced by Section 152 BNS, which drops the word “disaffection,” adds an explicit mens rea requirement (“purposely or knowingly”), extends coverage to electronic communication and financial support, and requires a link to secession, armed rebellion, or subversive activity rather than general criticism of government. See our dedicated piece on Section 152 BNS and the end of sedition for the full comparison. |
| ✗ Not a plain renumbering | Section 309 (attempt to suicide) | Not carried forward as a general offence. Section 226 BNS criminalises attempt to suicide only where the intent is to compel or restrain a public servant from discharging official duty. An attempt to suicide outside that narrow context is not an offence under the BNS at all, consistent with the general decriminalisation trend since the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017. |
| ✗ Not a plain renumbering | Sections 447 and 448 (criminal trespass, house-trespass) | Merged into a single provision, Section 329 BNS, which covers both criminal trespass and house-trespass with graded punishment inside one section rather than two separate ones. |
| ✗ Not a plain renumbering | Section 370 (trafficking of persons) | Retained in substance at Section 143 BNS, but positioned within a chapter that also introduces Section 143A-style aggravated trafficking language addressing hazardous forms of trafficking; check the current subsection structure before relying on the older case law’s subsection references. |
| ✓ Plain renumbering, substance unchanged | Sections 302, 376, 420, 379, 499/500, 120B, 306, 304B, 498A and most of the table above | Offence definition and the core conduct targeted did not change; only the section number and, in places, the punishment range were adjusted. |
A lawyer working from a renumbering-only table would read “Section 309 IPC maps to Section 226 BNS” and assume the offence transferred cleanly. It did not. The general offence was effectively abolished; only a narrow subset of the old conduct survives, and only against a public servant. Charging a client under Section 226 BNS for an ordinary attempt to suicide with no public-servant element would be charging an offence that does not exist.
Offences with no IPC ancestor
These are BNS provisions that criminalise conduct the IPC did not address as a distinct offence, verified against the BNS text itself rather than assumed from a claim that a provision is “new.”
Organised crime, Section 111 BNS. Defines an organised crime syndicate and criminalises acts including kidnapping, extortion, cybercrime, trafficking, and contract killing carried out by such a syndicate for material benefit. Before the BNS, organised crime was addressed mainly through state-level special legislation (the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act being the most litigated example), not through the general penal code.
Terrorist act, Section 113 BNS. Titled “terrorist act” in the bare text, this section defines terrorism and largely mirrors Section 15 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. An officer not below the rank of Superintendent of Police decides whether a case proceeds under Section 113 BNS or under the UAPA; the two are not both invoked for the same act.
Murder by a group on discriminatory grounds, Section 103(2) BNS. Murder committed by five or more persons acting together on grounds of race, caste, sex, place of birth, language, or personal belief carries an enhanced minimum sentence under this subsection. Neither the IPC nor any central statute previously named this fact pattern as a distinct aggravated category; prosecutions proceeded under the ordinary murder provision.
Grievous hurt by a group on discriminatory grounds, Section 117(4) BNS. The non-fatal counterpart to Section 103(2): grievous hurt caused by a group of five or more on the same discriminatory grounds, with each member liable.
Sexual intercourse by deceitful means, Section 69 BNS. Covers sexual intercourse obtained through deceit, including a false promise of marriage made without intention of fulfilling it, where the conduct does not amount to rape. Before this section existed, this fact pattern was litigated under the rape provisions through an evolving, inconsistent body of case law on whether consent obtained by fraud was valid consent.
A caution on snatching. Several mapping tables describe “snatching” as a standalone new offence at Section 112 BNS. That is not accurate as the section is actually drafted. Section 112 BNS is titled “petty organised crime,” and it criminalises a defined pattern of group or repeat offending, including “organised pick-pocketing, snatching, theft through shoplifting, or card skimming,” carried out by a person who has previously participated in similar acts or by a group. A single, unorganised act of snatching by a first-time individual offender is not automatically charged under Section 112; depending on the facts it is still theft or robbery under the ordinary property offence provisions. Charging Section 112 BNS requires the organised or repeat element the section actually specifies, not merely the act of snatching an object from someone’s hand.
IPC offences with no BNS successor
Two IPC provisions with real practical history deserve specific treatment because the internet’s shorthand answer for both is slightly wrong.
Section 377 IPC. The BNS does not reenact Section 377 in any form. This is a genuine gap, not merely a renumbering. The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Navtej Singh Johar v Union of India, (2018) 10 SCC 1, had already read down Section 377 to decriminalise consensual sexual conduct between adults, while leaving the provision in force for non-consensual acts, including non-consensual sexual assault against men and bestiality. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita drops Section 377 entirely rather than reenacting a narrowed version, which means non-consensual sexual assault against a male adult and bestiality currently have no dedicated provision under the BNS. Section 63 BNS, the rape provision, is defined in gender-specific terms as an act committed by a man against a woman; it does not extend to a male victim. This gap has been the subject of sustained commentary from the legal profession and is worth flagging in any brief involving a male sexual assault complainant, since a prosecutor may need to consider general hurt or assault provisions in the absence of a dedicated offence.
Section 497 IPC. Adultery was already struck down as unconstitutional before the BNS was drafted, in Joseph Shine v Union of India, (2019) 3 SCC 39, decided by a five-judge bench on 27 September 2018. The BNS did not need to affirmatively repeal or replace Section 497 because it was already void and unenforceable; the BNS simply does not reenact it. If you see a mapping table claiming the BNS “abolished” adultery as an offence, the more accurate statement is that adultery had already ceased to be a criminal offence six years before the BNS came into force, and the BNS reflects that pre-existing constitutional position rather than creating it.
Both gaps are a reminder that a section’s presence or absence in the current code can only be confirmed against the actual statute, not inferred from what the equivalent old provision used to say. The same discipline applies when checking whether a judgment interpreting the old provision is still good law; see our guide on good law checking and citators in India for how to confirm a precedent has not been overtaken by a later ruling or a legislative change.
Which code applies: the date-of-offence rule
The governing rule for which code applies to a given matter is the date the offence was committed, not the date of the FIR, the arrest, the charge-sheet, or the trial. An offence committed on or before 30 June 2024 is charged under the IPC and tried under the CrPC and Evidence Act procedure. An offence committed on or after 1 July 2024 is charged under the BNS and proceeds under the BNSS and BSA. Our companion piece on the new criminal laws and when they took effect covers the transition rule and the procedural changes in the BNSS in full; this piece focuses specifically on the substantive section-mapping question that article does not cover in depth.
flowchart TD
A["Alleged offence"] --> B{"Date offence\ncommitted?"}
B -->|"On or before\n30 June 2024"| C["IPC governs the charge"]
B -->|"On or after\n1 July 2024"| D["BNS governs the charge"]
C --> E["CrPC governs procedure"]
D --> F["BNSS governs procedure"]
E --> G["Evidence Act 1872\ngoverns evidence"]
F --> H["BSA governs evidence"]
G --> I["Cite IPC section number\nin all filings"]
H --> J["Cite BNS section number\nin all filings"]
I --> K["Old case law directly\non point"]
J --> L{"Is the BNS provision\nplain renumbering or\nsubstance-changed?"}
L -->|"Plain renumbering"| M["Old IPC case law\nstill applies to principle"]
L -->|"Substance changed"| N["Check the new provision's\nactual text before relying\non old case law"]One nuance the flowchart does not capture: a matter that spans the transition date, such as a continuing offence, needs a closer look at the specific facts and, where genuinely unclear, judicial guidance, rather than a mechanical application of the general rule. Whether an offence is bailable and which magistrate or sessions court can try it also depends on the punishment quantum attached to the section actually in force for that offence date; our explainers on bailable versus non-bailable offences and cognizable versus non-cognizable offences work through that classification for both regimes.
Repeal and savings: the exact provisions
Each of the three new codes carries its own repeal-and-savings provision, and the numbers are not interchangeable between the three statutes.
BNS, Section 358. Repeals the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and provides that anything done or any action taken under the IPC is deemed to have been done or taken under the corresponding BNS provision, without prejudice to the general application of Section 6 of the General Clauses Act, 1897, on the effect of repeal.
BNSS, Section 531. Repeals the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, and provides that any appeal, application, trial, inquiry, or investigation pending immediately before the BNSS came into force continues to be disposed of, continued, held, or made under the CrPC as it stood, rather than switching mid-proceeding to the BNSS.
BSA, Section 170. Repeals the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, and provides that any application, trial, inquiry, investigation, proceeding, or appeal pending immediately before the BSA came into force is dealt with under the Evidence Act as it stood, as if the BSA had not come into force. The BSA also changes how electronic records are treated as evidence; our piece on Section 63 BSA and electronic evidence covers that shift separately from the criminal-offence mapping this piece focuses on.
A related, frequently mis-cited point: the 60-day and 90-day charge-sheet timelines that drive default bail sit in Section 187(3) BNSS, not Section 193 BNSS. Section 193 BNSS deals with the police report on completion of investigation generally; the specific time limit that gives rise to an accused’s indefeasible right to default bail is in Section 187(3). Our dedicated piece on default bail under Section 187 BNSS works through the 60/90-day structure and the case law developing around it in detail. Getting this particular section number wrong in a bail application is the kind of error that gets caught immediately by opposing counsel, so verify it against the bare text before you file.
Verifying section numbers by hand against three different codes, for a docket that spans both regimes, is exactly the kind of repetitive, error-prone task that structured legal research is built to reduce. A search that resolves both the old and new numbering for the same underlying offence saves the manual cross-check every time a new filing lands on your desk with an unfamiliar section number.
Frequently asked questions
Is there an official government table mapping every IPC section to its BNS equivalent?
Parliament did not publish a section-by-section conversion table as part of the BNS itself; the Act is a standalone code, not an amendment schedule. Various private legal publishers and law firms have compiled unofficial mapping tables, and they do not always agree with each other, particularly on consolidated or split provisions. The only fully authoritative source for what a section says is the bare act text itself, published at indiacode.nic.in.
Why does the BNS have 358 sections when the IPC had 511?
The reduction comes mainly from consolidation, not from decriminalisation. Several IPC provisions that separately listed variants of the same offence have been folded into a single BNS section with subsections. Some redundant or overlapping provisions were removed because the conduct is covered elsewhere in the code. The number of offences recognised under Indian criminal law has not shrunk by a proportional amount; the drafting is simply denser.
Can I rely on a mapping table I found on a law firm’s blog without checking it myself?
Not for anything you are filing. Secondary mapping tables are a reasonable starting point for orientation, but they are compiled by different authors at different times, and errors propagate between them because many are copied from each other. Before citing a section in a pleading, verify it against the bare act text at indiacode.nic.in or a primary-source database, not against a table, however professionally presented.
Does Section 336 IPC have anything to do with Section 336 BNS?
No. This is one of the more dangerous coincidences in the renumbering. Section 336 IPC covers rash or negligent acts endangering life or personal safety (now Section 125 BNS). Section 336 BNS is forgery. Always attach the Act name to the section number in any written work to avoid this exact confusion.
What happened to Section 377 IPC under the new law?
The BNS does not reenact Section 377 in any form. Consensual same-sex conduct between adults was already decriminalised in 2018 by the Supreme Court in Navtej Singh Johar v Union of India, (2018) 10 SCC 1. What the BNS drops is the residual coverage Section 377 still had after that judgment: non-consensual sexual assault against a male adult, and bestiality. Neither currently has a dedicated BNS provision.
Is adultery a crime under the BNS?
No, and it was not a crime under the IPC either by the time the BNS was drafted. The Supreme Court struck down Section 497 IPC as unconstitutional in Joseph Shine v Union of India, (2019) 3 SCC 39, on 27 September 2018. The BNS does not reenact it because there was nothing left to carry forward; the offence had already ceased to exist as a matter of constitutional law.
What is “petty organised crime” under Section 112 BNS, and is it the same as snatching?
Section 112 BNS criminalises petty organised crime, a category that includes organised pickpocketing, snatching, shoplifting-based theft, and card skimming, when committed by a person with a history of such acts or as part of a group. It is not a blanket new offence covering every act of snatching. A single unorganised snatching incident by a first-time offender is still charged under the ordinary theft or robbery provisions, not automatically under Section 112.
Is attempt to suicide still a criminal offence under the BNS?
Only in one narrow circumstance. Section 226 BNS criminalises attempt to suicide specifically to compel or restrain a public servant from discharging official duty. A general attempt to suicide, outside that context, is not an offence under the BNS, consistent with the shift toward treating suicide as a mental-health issue rather than a criminal one since the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017.
If a BNS section is a pure renumbering of an IPC section, does old case law still apply?
Yes, for the substantive legal principle. Courts have not been asked to relitigate from first principles what constitutes murder, theft, or cheating; the body of interpretive case law built under the IPC generally carries forward to the equivalent BNS provision where the operative text is substantially unchanged. The task is to confirm the BNS provision’s current text matches what the old case law was interpreting, which matters most for provisions flagged as substance-changed in this piece rather than for plain renumbering. When citing that older authority, our guide on how to cite Indian judgments and the note on neutral citations are both useful, since a citation by year and serial number does not need to change just because the underlying section was renumbered.
How do I check whether a specific BNS section changed the punishment range from its IPC counterpart?
Read both provisions side by side against the bare act text; do not rely on a punishment figure quoted in a secondary source without checking it. Punishment ranges shifted for a meaningful number of provisions even where the offence definition itself did not change, and getting this wrong affects bail eligibility, since punishment quantum drives whether an offence is bailable and which court has jurisdiction to try it.
Where does the 60-day and 90-day charge-sheet deadline actually sit in the BNSS?
In Section 187(3) BNSS, not Section 193 BNSS as some sources state. Section 187(3) sets the 60-day limit for offences punishable with less than ten years’ imprisonment and the 90-day limit for offences punishable with ten years, life imprisonment, or death; missing the deadline gives the accused a right to apply for default bail. Section 193 BNSS deals with the general procedure for the police report on completion of investigation, a related but distinct provision.
What is the repeal and savings provision for each of the three new codes?
Section 358 BNS for the Indian Penal Code, Section 531 BNSS for the Code of Criminal Procedure, and Section 170 BSA for the Indian Evidence Act. Each provision repeals the corresponding old statute while preserving pending proceedings under the old law rather than forcing an abrupt mid-case switch to the new code.
Does a BNS section number ever map to more than one IPC section, or vice versa?
Yes, in both directions. Some BNS sections consolidate what were separate IPC provisions into a single section with subsections, so one BNS number can correspond to several old IPC numbers depending on the subsection. Conversely, a single broad IPC provision can be split across multiple BNS sections addressing different fact patterns. This is exactly why matching on offence title, not just the number, matters when working through a mapping table.
Is there a single reliable place to check an unusual BNS or IPC section that is not in this table?
The bare act text at indiacode.nic.in is the authoritative source. Indian Kanoon is useful for reading the section alongside citing case law. PRS Legislative Research publishes detailed bill analyses that flag substantive changes rather than just section numbers, which is useful context beyond a bare mapping. For research spanning both regimes in the same session, a source-linked search that carries both numbering schemes removes the manual cross-referencing step.
Should I cite the IPC section, the BNS section, or both in a filing about a pre-transition offence?
Cite the code that actually governs the matter, which for a pre-1 July 2024 offence is the IPC, and cite it without the BNS number attached unless you have a specific reason to reference the current provision for context. Mixing both numbers in an operative charge invites confusion about which code is actually being invoked. Where you do want to reference the BNS equivalent for the reader’s orientation, state clearly that the charge itself proceeds under the IPC.