Section 70 makes gang rape a distinct, aggravated offence. Where a woman is raped by one or more persons constituting a group, or acting in furtherance of a common intention, each such person is deemed to have committed the offence of rape and is punished severely — a mandatory minimum of twenty years, extendable to imprisonment for the remainder of natural life, where the victim is an adult; and imprisonment for the remainder of natural life, or death, where the victim is under eighteen years of age. Fine is mandatory in both cases and must go toward the victim's medical expenses and rehabilitation.
Verified against the National Crime Records Bureau's official BNS–IPC concordance (Sankalan Portal), which maps Section 70(1) to old IPC Section 376D and Section 70(2) to old IPC Sections 376DA and 376DB (the concordance itself flags 70(2) as "(Change)"), and cross-checked directly against the bare text of both Acts.
The IPC provisions the concordance points to (Sections 376D, 376DA and 376DB) were inserted into the IPC by later amendment, after its original 1860 text, and their amended wording is not reproduced on this page. No word-by-word comparison with the immediately prior IPC text is therefore stated here; readers who need that comparison should consult the amended IPC directly. The categories shown below are Substantively changed.
| BNS 70 | IPC, 1860 equivalent (concordance) | Note | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| 70(1) | 376D (Gang rape) | Amended-era provision | Substantively changed |
| 70(2) | 376DA / 376DB (Gang rape on woman under sixteen / twelve years of age) | Amended-era provisions; concordance flags “(Change)” | Substantively changed |
Section 70(1) keeps gang rape as its own offence with a minimum of twenty years; Section 70(2) provides a separate, higher tier for a victim under eighteen years of age, carrying imprisonment for the remainder of natural life, or death, in place of the separate provisions for victims under sixteen and under twelve that the concordance lists.
(1) Where a woman is raped by one or more persons constituting a group or acting in furtherance of a common intention, each of those persons shall be deemed to have committed the offence of rape and shall be punished with rigorous imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than twenty years, but which may extend to imprisonment for life which shall mean imprisonment for the remainder of that person’s natural life, and with fine:
Provided that such fine shall be just and reasonable to meet the medical expenses and rehabilitation of the victim:
Provided further that any fine imposed under this sub-section shall be paid to the victim.
(2) Where a woman under eighteen years of age is raped by one or more persons constituting a group or acting in furtherance of a common intention, each of those persons shall be deemed to have committed the offence of rape and shall be punished with imprisonment for life, which shall mean imprisonment for the remainder of that person’s natural life, and with fine, or with death:
Provided that such fine shall be just and reasonable to meet the medical expenses and rehabilitation of the victim:
Provided further that any fine imposed under this sub-section shall be paid to the victim.
Source: Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Act No. 45 of 2023), as published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary.
Sub-section (1) creates a form of deemed, collective liability: where a woman is raped by a group, or by persons acting in furtherance of a common intention, every one of those persons is deemed to have himself committed rape, regardless of which individual actually carried out the act of rape. This removes any need to prove precisely which member of the group physically committed the act against the victim — participation in the group act, with the requisite common intention, is itself enough to attract liability for each member. The punishment is considerably harsher than ordinary rape: rigorous imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than twenty years, extendable to imprisonment for the remainder of natural life, with fine that must specifically go toward the victim's medical expenses and rehabilitation, and that must be paid directly to the victim rather than merely imposed as a general penalty.
Sub-section (2) carries the same deemed, collective liability as sub-section (1) forward, but applies it where the victim is under eighteen years of age, and prescribes a markedly higher punishment: imprisonment for the remainder of natural life, and fine, or death. The fine carries the same victim-directed conditions as sub-section (1) — it must be just and reasonable to meet the victim's medical expenses and rehabilitation, and must be paid to the victim. Because this sub-section makes death an available sentence, its application in any individual case would depend on sentencing principles that lie outside the bare text of this section.
These judgment(s) relate to Section 70 as a whole rather than to one specific sub-section, and so are presented together here rather than alongside a particular clause above. The two below are complementary: the first states the legal test for the liability of every member of a group, and the second shows how the gravity of a gang rape was weighed at the sentencing stage.
A young woman went to watch a wedding procession in her village one night and did not come home; she was found four days later at a house in another place. Her account was that one man abducted her and raped her under threat of death, and that the appellant helped him; at trial she also said the appellant himself had sexually assaulted her. The trial court convicted both men of abduction, wrongful confinement and gang rape, and the High Court upheld this. One of the appellant's arguments in the Supreme Court was that the FIR and the medical consent form did not name him as having taken part in the rape himself.
The Court read the rule on gang rape (Explanation 1 to Section 376(2)(g) of the IPC: where a woman is raped by one or more persons in a group acting in furtherance of their common intention, each is deemed to have committed gang rape). This is a rule of joint liability whose essence is common intention, so one act of rape by a member of the group is enough to make every member who shared that intention liable; the prosecution does not have to prove a completed act of rape by each accused. Common intention is implicit in the gang-rape charge itself, and what is needed is evidence that it existed. Here the abduction, the confinement and the woman's testimony showed the two men acting in concert, so the gang-rape conviction stood. (The Court also set aside a conviction under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 for want of evidence, and reduced the appellant's life sentence to ten years' rigorous imprisonment to match his co-accused.) Section 70 now carries this rule in the words “one or more persons constituting a group or acting in furtherance of a common intention.”
Currency check: decided May 2025, directly construing the IPC provision from which Section 70 descends; nothing in the materials reviewed indicates it has been overruled or modified.
On the night of 16 December 2012, a twenty-three-year-old para-medical student and her male friend boarded a bus in Delhi after watching a film. Inside the moving bus, a group of men beat the friend and then raped the young woman one after another, injuring her gravely, before throwing both of them out onto the road. She died of her injuries in a hospital in Singapore. The trial court convicted four men of offences including criminal conspiracy, abduction, gang rape, murder and robbery, sentencing each to death for murder and to life imprisonment for gang rape under Section 376(2)(g) of the IPC. The Delhi High Court confirmed the death sentences, and these appeals followed.
The Court examined the sentence by weighing the circumstances that aggravated the crime against those that favoured the appellants (their ages, family circumstances, conduct in custody and the chance of reform). It found the brutality and the shock to society's conscience so great that the aggravating side outweighed the rest, and it affirmed the death sentences. The point to carry into Section 70 is the Court's view of how grave gang rape accompanied by extreme violence is. It is not a statement of what Section 70(1) itself prescribes: in that case death was imposed for the murder, while the gang-rape conviction carried life imprisonment, and Section 70(1) provides for twenty years to life imprisonment (the remainder of natural life) with fine, with death appearing in Section 70(2) only where the woman raped is under eighteen.
Currency check: decided May 2017 under the IPC, and still among the most-cited authorities on gang rape and on capital sentencing; nothing in the materials reviewed indicates it has been overruled.
No. The section deems every person constituting the group, or acting in furtherance of the common intention, to have committed the offence of rape, regardless of which individual member physically carried out the act.
The bare text of sub-section (1) states the minimum as twenty years, extendable to imprisonment for the remainder of natural life, with no proviso in the text itself permitting a lower sentence.
Both sub-sections expressly require that any fine imposed be paid to the victim, and that it be just and reasonable to meet her medical expenses and rehabilitation — it is not a general penalty payable to the State.