What Was IPC Section 15?
IPC Section 15 sat within Chapter II of the Indian Penal Code ("General Explanations"), the chapter that defines key terms used throughout the rest of the Code — words like "Government," "India," "Judge," and "Court of Justice." Section 15's original role was to define "British India" for the purposes of the Code, at a time when India's territory was divided into directly administered "British India" and the semi-autonomous Princely States.
That definition became obsolete well before independence, as India's constitutional and administrative structure evolved through the 1930s. Section 15 was accordingly repealed by the Adaptation of Laws Order, 1937, along with related provisions. It has remained an empty, repealed section number in every edition of the Code since — including in the final version of the IPC that was itself repealed and replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita on 1 July 2024.
What Section 15 Originally Said (For Reference)
This bracketed note is exactly what you will see against Section 15 in any current reproduction of the Code — it is standard drafting practice to leave a repealed section's number in place (so the numbering of every other section stays unchanged) while removing its substantive text. Section 15 is not unique in this respect: Section 13 (which once defined "Queen") was similarly omitted by the Adaptation Order, 1950, and Section 16 (which once separately defined "Government of India") was repealed by the same 1937 Order as Section 15.
Why Was It Repealed?
Sections like 15, 13, and 16 were tied to India's status and administrative divisions under British colonial rule. As that constitutional structure changed through the 1930s and 1940s — and especially after independence in 1947 and the adoption of the Constitution in 1950 — terms like "British India" and "Queen" stopped having any legal meaning within India's criminal law. Rather than rewriting the entire Code's numbering each time, Parliament (and, before it, the colonial and early post-independence legislature) used Adaptation Orders to formally repeal the outdated definitions while leaving the section numbers as placeholders in the text.
Which Provisions Actually Apply Now
If you were looking for a definition of "Government" or "India" as those terms are used in Indian criminal law, the provisions that now do that job are found a little further along in the same chapter.
Section 17 IPC — "Government"
Defines "Government" as denoting the Central Government or the Government of a State — the modern replacement for the colonial-era concept Section 15/16 once addressed.
Section 18 IPC — "India"
Defines "India" as the territory of India (as amended following the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019) — the modern replacement for the old "British India" concept in Section 15.
If you searched for "IPC Section 15" expecting a punishable offence — for instance, confusing it with a section from a later, differently numbered chapter — it may help to browse the full list of IPC sections, or get in touch and describe the situation you're dealing with, so the correct provision can be identified.