Vidhara

The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023

§86Cruelty defined

For the purposes of section 85, “cruelty” means—

(a) any wilful conduct which is of such a nature as is likely to drive the woman to commit suicide or to cause grave injury or danger to life, limb or health (whether mental or physical) of the woman; or

(b) harassment of the woman where such harassment is with a view to coercing her or any person related to her to meet any unlawful demand for any property or valuable security or is on account of failure by her or any person related to her to meet such demand.

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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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