The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023
Nothing is an offence which is done by accident or misfortune, and without any criminal intention or knowledge in the doing of a lawful act in a lawful manner by lawful means and with proper care and caution.
Illustration. A is at work with a hatchet; the head flies off and kills a man who is standing by. Here, if there was no want of proper caution on the part of A, his act is excusable and not an offence.
IPC §80 → BNS §18 per the official NCRB Sankalan table.
Source & version
Official text: Gazette of India via MHA (official) ↗
Official Gazette text: The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (45 of 2023), English PDF as hosted by Ministry of Home Affairs (mha.gov.in, file 250883_english_01042024.pdf; canonical mirror indiacode.nic.in bitstream a202345.pdf). Extracted via pdftotext 26.07 -layout and @nexlex/ingest gazette-pdf parser on 2026-07-14. Automated parse; structural validation + spot verification of sections 1, 63, 103, 302, 358; full clause-level proofread pending.
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