Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 — Section 24

Offence Requiring a Particular Intent or Knowledge Committed by One Who Is Intoxicated

Section 24 addresses voluntary intoxication for offences that require a particular knowledge or intent: a person who commits such an act while intoxicated is treated as if he had the same knowledge he would have had if sober — unless the intoxicating substance was administered to him without his knowledge or against his will, in which case this section does not apply.

Please note: This page reflects our understanding of the law as of the date it was last reviewed. Parliament, the State Legislatures, and the courts continue to amend and interpret this law, and this page may not yet reflect the most recent change. Please verify the current text of the law independently, and consult a licensed advocate for advice on your own matter, before relying on this page.

Corresponding Provision Under Prior Law

Verified against the National Crime Records Bureau's official BNS–IPC concordance (Sankalan Portal) and cross-checked directly against the bare text of both Acts. Section 24 is marked Exact correspondence:

BNS 24	Covers	IPC, 1860 equivalent	Category
24	Offence requiring a particular intent or knowledge committed by one who is intoxicated	S.86 (word-for-word identical rule)	Exact

Comparing the bare text directly, BNS Section 24 reproduces old IPC Section 86 without any change whatsoever, down to the exact wording.

Quick Reference

Section 24 is a General Exception — more precisely, a deeming rule about how voluntary intoxication is treated for intent-based offences, not itself a stand-alone offence. It carries no BNSS First Schedule entry and no cognizable/bailable/compoundable/triable-court classification of its own.

What it does: where an offence requires a particular knowledge or intent, a person who commits the act while voluntarily intoxicated is deemed to have had the same knowledge he would have had if he had not been intoxicated — intoxication is not a shield against liability for the required mental element.
Exception: this deeming rule does not apply where the intoxicating substance was administered without the person's knowledge or against his will (in which case Section 23 may instead apply).
Effect: this section works against the accused, not in his favour — it fixes the accused with the knowledge or intent he would have had if sober, rather than exempting him.

Statutory Text (Verbatim)

In cases where an act done is not an offence unless done with a particular knowledge or intent, a person who does the act in a state of intoxication shall be liable to be dealt with as if he had the same knowledge as he would have had if he had not been intoxicated, unless the thing which intoxicated him was administered to him without his knowledge or against his will.

Source: Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Act No. 45 of 2023), as published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary.

Explanation & Illustration (Lexovia's Commentary — Not Statutory Text)

Voluntary intoxication does not excuse the required mental element

Explanation (Lexovia's Commentary)

This section is best understood as the deliberate counterpart to Section 23. Where an offence is defined so that it is only committed with a particular knowledge or intent, this section prevents a person from using self-induced (voluntary) intoxication as a shield against that mental element requirement. Instead of asking what the person actually knew or intended while intoxicated, the law deems the person to have had the same knowledge he would have had if sober — effectively fixing him with the ordinary, sober state of knowledge regardless of his actual, impaired state at the time. This reflects a policy choice: allowing voluntary intoxication to negate criminal knowledge or intent would create an obvious loophole, letting a person drink deliberately and then claim ignorance of what an offence otherwise requires. The section's own proviso carves out the one situation where this deeming rule does not apply: where the intoxication was involuntary (administered without knowledge or against the person's will), in which case Section 23's own, different test governs instead.

Illustration (Lexovia's Own Example)

A person voluntarily drinks heavily at a party and, in that self-induced intoxicated state, takes another guest's expensive watch believing, because of his drunkenness, that it is his own. The offence in question requires a dishonest intention to take property belonging to another. Because the intoxication was entirely voluntary, this section deems the person to have had the same knowledge of whose watch it actually was as he would have had if sober — he cannot rely on his drunken confusion to deny the dishonest intent, and is dealt with as if he had known the watch was not his.

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Related / Cross-Referenced Sections

FAQs

Does voluntary intoxication ever excuse a person from an intent-based offence under this section?

No. This section works against the accused — it deems him to have had the same knowledge he would have had if sober, rather than excusing him because of his intoxicated state.

What happens if the intoxication itself was involuntary?

This section's deeming rule does not apply in that situation; Section 23's own, separate test for involuntary intoxication governs instead.

Is this section a defence, like most other provisions in this chapter?

No. Unlike most General Exceptions, this section does not exempt a person from liability — it fixes a voluntarily intoxicated person with the knowledge or intent he would have had if sober.