● Modified in BNS
IPC Section 420 punished cheating and dishonest inducement to deliver property with imprisonment of up to 7 years and a fine. Under the BNS, the same offence and punishment continue as Section 318(4). It is a non-bailable, cognizable offence usually tried before a Magistrate of the First Class.
Section 420 IPC — the best-known cheating provision — punished cheating and thereby dishonestly inducing delivery of property (or alteration/destruction of valuable security) with imprisonment up to 7 years and fine.
BNS Section 318(4) retains the offence and punishment: imprisonment up to 7 years and fine. Simple cheating is punished under 318(2) with up to 3 years, and cheating with knowledge of wrongful loss to a person whose interest the offender was bound to protect under 318(3) with up to 5 years.
Substance retained; the famous "420" is renumbered to BNS 318(4), with all cheating offences consolidated into a single section.
Imprisonment up to 7 years, and fine.
IPC 420 is non-bailable.
This is a cognizable offence.
Compoundable with the permission of the court.
Matters under IPC 420 are tried before the Magistrate of the First Class.
A common defence is that there was no dishonest intention at the time the promise was made — a later failure to repay a loan or honour a contract is a civil wrong, not cheating, unless dishonest intent existed from the outset. Absence of actual inducement or delivery of property, and disputes that are genuinely commercial rather than fraudulent in nature, are also frequently 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