Section 190 provides that if an offence is committed by any member of an unlawful assembly in pursuit of the assembly's common object, or of an offence the members knew was likely to be committed in pursuit of that object, every person who was a member of the assembly at the time is guilty of that offence.
Verified against the National Crime Records Bureau's official BNS–IPC concordance (Sankalan Portal), which maps Section 190 to old IPC Section 149, and cross-checked directly against the bare text of both Acts, found to be word-for-word identical.
| BNS section | IPC, 1860 equivalent | Category |
|---|---|---|
| 190 | 149 | Exact |
If an offence is committed by any member of an unlawful assembly in prosecution of the common object of that assembly, or such as the members of that assembly knew to be likely to be committed in prosecution of that object, every person who, at the time of the committing of that offence, is a member of the same assembly, is guilty of that offence.
Source: Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Act No. 45 of 2023), as published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary.
This section extends criminal liability for an offence committed by any one member of an unlawful assembly to every other person who was a member of that assembly at the time, provided the offence was committed in pursuit of the assembly's shared common object, or was one the members knew was likely to occur in pursuing that object. A member need not personally commit or even directly participate in the specific act to be held guilty of it under this section.
These judgment(s) relate to Section 190 as a whole rather than to one specific sub-section, and so are presented together here rather than alongside a particular clause above.
A quarrel over a village shed damaged by a buffalo led to two incidents. In the second, on 6 October 2001, a group of accused armed with weapons such as a barchi, sword, spear and lathi waylaid the complainant party on their way to the police station. One of them stabbed Madan, who died. The trial court convicted the appellants of murder with the aid of Section 149 of the old Penal Code (the provision behind this Section), and the High Court upheld that. On appeal, the Supreme Court noted that no specific act of assault was attributed to the present appellants.
The Court held that, following the Constitution Bench in Masalti, every member of an unlawful assembly need not play an active role to be convicted with the aid of this provision: the prosecution must show that the person was a member of the assembly and shared its common object. A person who was a mere passive onlooker, there out of idle curiosity, does not share that object. On the facts the Court also found it unclear that the common object was to cause death, gave the appellants the benefit of doubt on murder, and altered the conviction to culpable homicide not amounting to murder (second part of Section 304), with seven years’ rigorous imprisonment.
Currency check: decided November 2023, applying the enduring Constitution Bench authority of Masalti v. State of U.P., [1964] 8 SCR 133; no overruling found in this review.
No. Every member of the assembly at the time the offence was committed is guilty of it, as long as it was committed in pursuit of the assembly's common object, or was one the members knew was likely to occur in pursuing that object.
The same punishment as for the underlying offence actually committed.
No. It is word-for-word identical to old IPC Section 149.