Offences affecting public health safety, convenience, decency and morals

You catch the Harbour line at CBD Belapur. Someone is selling cut fruit from an uncovered cart, a two-wheeler cuts across the platform road at speed, and a hoarding nearby is being repaired with no barricade. None of these has a named victim yet. The criminal law still cares, because each act endangers people in general. That is the idea behind the Chapter on public health, safety, convenience, decency and morals: punish the risk before the injury, and the question for the student is which section fits which risk.

In two minutes

BNS ss.270–297 (old IPC Chapter XIV, ss.268–294A) punish conduct that endangers the public at large: nuisance, infection, adulteration, negligence with dangerous things, rash driving, obscenity and unauthorised lotteries.

The rest of this chapter

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