VoxJuris
Home › Acts › IPC › Chapter XVII › Section 421

Indian Penal Code, 1860 · Chapter XVII: Of Offences against Property · Of Fraudulent Deeds and Dispositions of Property

Section 421: Dishonest or fraudulent removal or concealment of property to prevent distribution among creditor

The Indian Penal Code, 1860 was repealed and replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 from 1 July 2024. It still applies to matters and proceedings from before that date, as the repealing law provides.

Now in the BNS section 320 (Dishonest or fraudulent removal or concealment of property to prevent distribution among creditors)

In plain words

Dishonestly or fraudulently removing, hiding, handing over or transferring property without adequate payment, intending or knowing it likely to prevent its lawful distribution among one's own or another's creditors, is punishable with imprisonment of either description for up to two years, or fine, or both.

A simplified explanation, prepared with AI assistance from the official text below and checked automatically against it for numbers and cross-references. The official text is the law and prevails over this summary. Not legal advice.

Official text

Whoever dishonestly or fraudulently removes, conceals or delivers to any person, or transfers or causes to be transferred to any person, without adequate consideration, any property, intending thereby to prevent, or knowing it to be likely that he will thereby prevent, the distribution of that property according to law among his creditors or the creditors of any other person, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.

Corresponding sections were matched by comparing the wording of both official texts, and for the IPC and BNS, also against a published correspondence table. Wording, punishments and structure often changed, so read both sections before relying on the match.

Source: India Code (Legislative Department), the text of the Act as it stood before its repeal. Words in square brackets [ ] were inserted or substituted by later amending Acts, and *** marks words omitted by an amendment. The amendment footnotes are not reproduced here.

Supreme Court judgments citing the section 421