The Indian Penal Code, 1860 · Ch. XVI — OF OFFENCES AFFECTING THE HUMAN BODY
Section 359 — Kidnapping
Kidnapping is of two kinds: kidnapping from [India], and kidnapping from lawful guardianship.
Loading this section
The Indian Penal Code, 1860 · Ch. XVI — OF OFFENCES AFFECTING THE HUMAN BODY
Kidnapping is of two kinds: kidnapping from [India], and kidnapping from lawful guardianship.
IPC Section 359 → BNS Section 137 per the official NCRB Sankalan table. BNS Section 137 consolidates multiple IPC sections.
This is the text of BNS Section 137, not of the section above. Read both before relying on either.
(1) Kidnapping is of two kinds: kidnapping from India, and kidnapping from lawful guardianship––
(a) whoever conveys any person beyond the limits of India without the consent of that person, or of some person legally authorised to consent on behalf of that person, is said to kidnap that person from India;
(b) whoever takes or entices any child or any person of unsound mind, out of the keeping of the lawful guardian of such child or person of unsound mind, without the consent of such guardian, is said to kidnap such child or person from lawful guardianship.
Explanation.––The words “lawful guardian” in this clause include any person lawfully entrusted with the care or custody of such child or other person.
Exception.—This clause does not extend to the act of any person who in good faith believes himself to be the father of an illegitimate child, or who in good faith believes himself to be entitled to the lawful custody of such child, unless such act is committed for an immoral or unlawful purpose.
(2) Whoever kidnaps any person from India or from lawful guardianship shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine.
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 Repealed by BNS 2023 w.e.f. 2024-07-01.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). Chapter XIV's heading has a space inserted in “DECENCY AND”. BOTH printings fuse it, and per-glyph advance widths fitted over this act's 105 distinct small-cap tokens show the fusion is in the PRINT (predicted box within 0.6pt of observed; a real space on that line is 2.75pt) rather than in the extraction — as it is for the eleven other fused headings in this act, which were separated from the contents page. Reviewed correction, D-078 — see scripts/ingest/src/repairs/repair-heading-typos.mjs.
Spotted a mistake in this text or its mapping? Report an issue with IPC Section 359
Was this page useful for your prep?