Section 167 provides that a person already subject to the Air Force Act, 1950, the Army Act, 1950, or the Navy Act, 1957, is not liable to punishment under the Sanhita for any of the offences defined in this Chapter (Chapter VIII, Of Offences Relating to the Army, Navy and Air Force). This is a purely definitional, scope-limiting provision, and does not carry its own First Schedule quick-reference row.
Verified against the National Crime Records Bureau's official BNS–IPC concordance (Sankalan Portal), which maps Section 167 to old IPC Section 139, and cross-checked directly against the bare text of both Acts.
| BNS section | IPC, 1860 equivalent | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 167 | 139 | Substantively changed |
Substantively changed: Old IPC Section 139 listed a longer set of statutes, reflecting successive historical amendments — the Army Act, the Army Act 1950, the Naval Discipline Act, the Indian Navy (Discipline) Act 1934, the Air Force Act, and the Air Force Act 1950. Section 167 instead lists only three, current statutes — the Air Force Act, 1950, the Army Act, 1950, and the Navy Act, 1957 — dropping the older, superseded Naval Discipline Act and Indian Navy (Discipline) Act references and updating the naval reference to the Navy Act, 1957, which now governs the Indian Navy. This is a modernisation of the statutory references rather than a change to the underlying scope-limiting rule itself, which continues to exempt persons already subject to military law from punishment under this Chapter of the Sanhita.
No person subject to the Air Force Act, 1950, the Army Act, 1950 and the Navy Act, 1957, or shall be subject to punishment under this Sanhita for any of the offences defined in this Chapter.
Source: Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Act No. 45 of 2023), as published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary.
Note: the wording above, including the word “or” where old IPC Section 139 reads “is subject to punishment,” follows the Gazette text. Readers who need certainty on that phrasing should check it against an official source.
Based on comparison with old IPC Section 139, this section's evident purpose is to exempt persons who are subject to the Air Force Act, 1950, the Army Act, 1950, or the Navy Act, 1957 — that is, persons already governed by their own dedicated military disciplinary law — from being separately punished under this Chapter of the Sanhita for the same offences. This avoids overlapping liability between the general criminal law's provisions on army, navy, and air force offences and the specialised disciplinary codes that already apply to serving members of the armed forces.
This section does not create an offence of its own. It instead limits who can be punished under the other offences defined in this Chapter, so it has no independent First Schedule row.
A person already subject to the Air Force Act, 1950, the Army Act, 1950, or the Navy Act, 1957 is not liable to punishment under this Chapter of the Sanhita for the offences it defines.
No. It means they are not punished under this Chapter of the Sanhita specifically; they instead remain subject to the disciplinary framework of their own governing military Act.