The Indian Penal Code, 1860

§103 — When the right of private defence of property extends to causing death

The right of private defence of property extends, under the restrictions mentioned in section 99, to the voluntary causing of death or of any other harm to the wrong-doer, if the offence, the committing of which, or the attempting to commit which, occasions the exercise of the right, be an offence of any of the descriptions hereinafter enumerated, namely:— First.—Robbery; Secondly.—House-breaking by night; Thirdly.—Mischief by fire committed on any building, tent or vessel, which building, tent or vessel is used as a human dwelling, or as a place for the custody of property; Fourthly.—Theft, mischief, or house-trespass, under such circumstances as may reasonably cause apprehension that death or grievous hurt will be the consequence, if such right of private defence is not exercised.

Old law ⇄ new law

Renumberedold law ⇄ new law

Old lawIPC §103When the right of private defence of property extends to causing death New lawBNS §41When right of private defence of property extends to causing death

IPC §103 → BNS §41 per the official NCRB Sankalan table.

State amendments

This section has been amended in its application to Karnataka. The text above is the central provision and is what applies everywhere else — these amendments are law only in the State that made them.

Karnataka[Vide Karnataka Act 8 of 1972, sec. 2].Read →Hide
Karnataka (1) In section 103, in clause Thirdly, — (i) after the words “mischief by fire”, the words “or any explosive substance” Shall be inserted; (ii) after the words “as a human dwelling, or” the words “as a place of worship, or” shall be inserted. (2) After clause Fourthly, the following clause shall be inserted namely:— “Fifthly.— Mischief by fire or any explosive substance committed on any property used or intended to be used for the purpose of Government or any local authority, statutory body or company owned or controlled by Government or railway or any vehicle used or adapted to be used for the carriage of passengers for hire or reward”.

Reproduced from the same official PDF as the section above, as the amending Act words it — not a consolidated State version of the section. Check the source before relying on it.

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Source & version

Official text: India Code (official) ↗

Official India Code text: The Indian Penal Code, 1860 (45 of 1860), English PDF (A1860-45.pdf) retrieved via Internet Archive Wayback Machine snapshot 2020-04-21 of indiacode.nic.in (portal unreachable from ingest network). Extracted via pdftotext 26.07 -bbox and @nexlex/ingest inline parser on 2026-07-15. Repealed by BNS 2023 w.e.f. 2024-07-01. Automated parse; footnotes/amendment history excluded; illustrations restored via illustration-aware re-extraction on 2026-07-19; spot-verified; full clause-level proofread pending. Eleven State-inserted sections that had been published as central law were removed on 2026-08-02 after the D-052 guard identified them: 354E, 376F, 509A and 509B (Chhattisgarh Act 25 of 2015), 379A and 379B (Gujarat Act 6 of 2019) and 382B-382F (Tripura Act 4 of 2019). They are now recorded as State amendments against the sections they attach to, not as sections of the Code (D-053).

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