● Modified in BNS
Kidnapping or abducting a person and threatening death or hurt, or causing hurt or death, to compel payment of a ransom or to compel any act, carries the death penalty or imprisonment for life, plus fine, under BNS Section 140(2) -- unchanged from IPC 364A. It is a non-bailable, cognizable offence triable only by a Court of Session.
Section 364A IPC, inserted into the Code in 1993 as India's dedicated anti-ransom-kidnapping provision, punished kidnapping or abducting any person, or keeping a person in detention after such kidnapping or abduction, coupled with a threat to cause death or hurt, conduct giving rise to a reasonable apprehension that the victim may be killed or hurt, or the actual causing of hurt or death -- all done in order to compel the Government, a foreign State, an international inter-governmental organisation, or any other person to act or abstain from acting, or to pay a ransom. It carried the death penalty or imprisonment for life, and fine.
BNS Section 140 consolidates the old kidnapping-aggravation cluster -- kidnapping to murder (IPC 364), kidnapping for ransom (IPC 364A), kidnapping to secretly confine (IPC 365), and kidnapping to subject to grievous hurt or slavery (IPC 367) -- into a single section with four numbered sub-sections. Sub-section (2) reproduces IPC 364A's ransom offence and its death-or-life-imprisonment punishment verbatim, with only a punctuation-level change (a comma before "or imprisonment for life").
The ransom-kidnapping offence and its punishment are unchanged in substance. The only difference is structural: IPC 364A's free-standing section is now sub-section (2) of a single consolidated section 140 that groups it alongside the related kidnapping-aggravation offences that used to sit in separate sections (364, 365, 367).
Death, or imprisonment for life, and fine..
IPC 364A is non-bailable..
This is a cognizable. offence.
Non-compoundable..
Matters under IPC 364A are tried before the Court of Session..
Because the offence hinges on the ransom-demand or threat-to-kill element, a common line of defence is that the detention or restraint, even if proved, lacked the specific intent to compel an act or extract a ransom -- for instance a genuine custody or civil dispute rather than an abduction for ransom. Absence of any communicated threat or demand, mistaken identity, and the victim's own consent to travel with the accused (negating kidnapping/abduction itself) are also raised.
Summaries are for general information and are not legal advice. For the authoritative bare-act text, see the official Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 and Indian Penal Code, 1860 (full amended text, as it stood before repeal) on India Code, or the Ministry of Home Affairs' new criminal laws page. ← All comparisons