Offences relating to weights and measures

At a vegetable market in Vashi, a customer asks for one kilo of tomatoes and the seller's scale reads one kilo, but the weight on the pan is a little light. Across a hundred customers a day, the shortfall is a real profit. Customers rarely notice and almost never complain, yet this is one of the oldest forms of dishonesty in trade. Which offence is it, and does the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita still have a section for it?

In two minutes

The syllabus cites four old penal provisions (IPC ss.264–267) on false weights and measures, but the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 contains no chapter or section on them; a dishonest trader is today charged under general provisions, chiefly cheating (s.318) and the false-mark offences (ss.345–350), and trade-specific weighing rules belong to other legislation.

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