Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 · Chapter VI: Of Offences Affecting The Human Body

Section 102 BNS: Culpable homicide by causing death of person other than person whose death was intended

Corresponding IPC: Section 301 IPC

Bare Act text

If a person, by doing anything which he intends or knows to be likely to cause death, commits culpable homicide by causing the death of any person, whose death he neither intends nor knows himself to be likely to cause, the culpable homicide committed by the offender is of the description of which it would have been if he had caused the death of the person whose death he intended or knew himself to be likely to cause.

Text as enacted in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Act No. 45 of 2023), in force from 1 July 2024. Source: India Code, Government of India.

In simple words

If a person does an act intending or knowing it likely to cause death and thereby kills someone other than the intended victim, the offence has the same character as if the intended person had been killed.