On 1 July 2024, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 replaced a criminal code that had governed India for 164 years. The Indian Penal Code, 1860 did not vanish, but it stopped applying to fresh offences. Overnight, every new grievous-hurt FIR stopped reading “Sec. 325 IPC” and started reading Section 117 BNS<\/strong> instead. An assault committed on 30 June 2024 stayed under the old code; the identical assault a day later fell under the new one.<\/p>\n
That single date created a mess that investigating officers, defence counsel and law students are still untangling. Courts across India now run parallel dockets: the IPC for offences committed before 1 July 2024, the BNS for everything after. And the first question everyone asks is the same. Which old section maps to which new one, and did anything actually change?<\/p>\n
Mostly, nothing did. The grievous-hurt architecture is one of the most stable parts of Indian criminal law, and Sec. 117 (BNS) is very close to a straight renumbering of the old provisions. But “mostly” is not “entirely.” One quiet, consequential change rode in with the new number, and it is the kind of thing that decides borderline cases.<\/p>\n
The definition of grievous hurt shortened its own clock. Under the old Sec. 320 (IPC), the eighth kind of grievous hurt covered any hurt that left the victim in severe bodily pain, or unable to follow ordinary pursuits, for twenty days<\/strong>. The new Sec. 116 (BNS) cuts that to fifteen days<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
An injury that healed in seventeen days would not have qualified as grievous under the IPC. Under the BNS, it can. That is a real shift in where the line sits, and most online pages mention it in passing without explaining what it does to the evidence.<\/p>\n
Here is the other problem. A surprising number of aggregator pages get the mapping wrong. They conflate the definition of grievous hurt (old Sec. 320 IPC), the offence of causing it (old Sec. 322 IPC) and the punishment for it (old Sec. 325 IPC), treating all three as one section.<\/p>\n
Several print the wrong exception cross-reference inside 117(2). A few brand the whole of Sec. 117 as non-bailable, which is simply false for the base offence. If you rely on those pages to argue bail or draft a charge, you will get caught out.<\/p>\n
So what exactly does Sec. 117 (BNS) punish, and how badly? That is where we start.<\/p>\n
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Section 117 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 punishes voluntarily causing grievous hurt.<\/strong> The base offence carries up to seven years plus a fine (Sec. 117(2)); ten years to life for permanent disability or a vegetative state (Sec. 117(3)); and up to seven years for a group of five or more acting on identity grounds (Sec. 117(4)). It replaces IPC Sections 322 and 325.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The base rule is simple; the detail is where charge-sheets are won or lost. To use Sec. 117 correctly you need the exact IPC mapping, the eight kinds of grievous hurt under Sec. 116, and the bail and compounding rules. Let’s start with what the section actually says.<\/p>\n\n