The Indian Penal Code, 1860

§353 — Assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty

Whoever assaults or uses criminal force to any person being a public servant in the execution of his duty as such public servant, or with intent to prevent or deter that person from discharging his duty as such public servant, or in consequence of anything done or attempted to be done by such person to the lawful discharge of his duty as such public servant, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.

Old law ⇄ new law

Renumberedold law ⇄ new law

Old lawIPC §353Assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty New lawBNS §132Assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty

IPC §353 → BNS §132 per the official NCRB Sankalan table.

State amendments

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

Maharashtra[Vide Maharashtra Act 40 of 2018, sec. 3]Read →Hide
Maharashtra.— Amendment of section 353 of 45 of 1860.—In section 353 of the said Code, for the words “two years” the words “five years” shall be substituted.

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 Repealed by BNS 2023 w.e.f. 2024-07-01.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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