Section 9 prevents a single course of conduct from being punished piece by piece: where an offence is made up of parts that are themselves offences, or where the same conduct falls under two or more overlapping definitions, the offender's punishment is capped — at one of the constituent offences in the first case, and at the most severe punishment the trying Court could award for any one of the overlapping offences in the second.
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 9 is marked Exact correspondence:
| BNS 9 | Covers | IPC, 1860 equivalent | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Limit of punishment of offence made up of several offences | S.71 “Limit of punishment of offence made up of several offences” | Exact |
Comparing the bare text directly, BNS Section 9 carries the identical rule and identical illustrations from old IPC Section 71, with no substantive change. The only difference is presentational: BNS 9 breaks IPC 71's single unbroken paragraph into numbered sub-section (1) and sub-section (2) (with lettered clauses (a) and (b) within (2)) for readability, without altering the rule's substance or its two illustrations in any way.
(1) Where anything which is an offence is made up of parts, any of which parts is itself an offence, the offender shall not be punished with the punishment of more than one of such his offences, unless it be so expressly provided.
(2) Where—
(a) anything is an offence falling within two or more separate definitions of any law in force for the time being by which offences are defined or punished; or
(b) several acts, of which one or more than one would by itself or themselves constitute an offence, constitute, when combined, a different offence,
the offender shall not be punished with a more severe punishment than the Court which tries him could award for any one of such offences.
Illustrations.
(a) A gives Z fifty strokes with a stick. Here A may have committed the offence of voluntarily causing hurt to Z by the whole beating, and also by each of the blows which make up the whole beating. If A were liable to punishment for every blow, he might be imprisoned for fifty years, one for each blow. But he is liable only to one punishment for the whole beating.
(b) But, if, while A is beating Z, Y interferes, and A intentionally strikes Y, here, as the blow given to Y is no part of the act whereby A voluntarily causes hurt to Z, A is liable to one punishment for voluntarily causing hurt to Z, and to another for the blow given to Y.
Source: Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Act No. 45 of 2023), as published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary.
Some offences are, on close analysis, made up of smaller components that would themselves separately qualify as offences — a beating made up of individual blows, each blow itself capable of being “hurt.” Sub-section (1) prevents multiplying punishment by treating each such component as a separate chargeable offence: the offender is punished for no more than one of the constituent offences that together make up the overall offence, unless some other provision expressly says punishment should be cumulative in that situation. This protects against a single continuous act being artificially split into many smaller offences purely to stack up punishment.
Sub-section (2) addresses two related situations. Clause (a): the same conduct might fall within two or more separate legal definitions of an offence at once (for instance, under both the Sanhita and a special law dealing with the same subject-matter). Clause (b): several individual acts, each capable of being an offence on its own, might combine into a different, distinct offence when considered together. In either situation, the offender is not punished more severely than the trying Court could award for any single one of the overlapping or combined offences — the overlap or combination is not used as a device to stack up a heavier total punishment than any one of the offences, taken alone, would carry.
No. Sub-section (1) and its own illustration confirm that a person is liable to only one punishment for the whole continuous act, not one punishment per constituent blow.
Under sub-section (2)(a), the offender is not punished more severely than the trying Court could award for any one of the overlapping offences, even though both legal definitions are technically satisfied.