BNS Section 244: Fraudulent Claim To Property To Prevent Its Seizure As Forfeited Or In Execution

Definition of BNS Section 244

Section 244 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023 states:

“Whoever fraudulently accepts, receives or claims any property or any interest therein, knowing that he has no right or rightful claim to such property or interest, or practises any deception touching any right to any property or any interest therein, intending thereby to prevent that property or interest therein from being taken as a forfeiture or in satisfaction of a fine, under a sentence which has been pronounced, or which he knows to be likely to be pronounced by a Court or other competent authority, or from being taken in execution of a decree or order which has been made, or which he knows to be likely to be made by a Court in a civil suit, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.”

Explanation and Illustration of BNS Section 244

This section is applicable to any person within the sovereign borders of India, whether citizen, resident or otherwise. It deals with the offence of obstructing lawful seizure of property. Let us break down the section to get a better understanding of it.

Offence

This section is supplementary to Section 243. Section 243 states that if a person transfers or delivers to any person any property or any interest therein, intending thereby to prevent that property or interest therein from being taken as a forfeiture. In other words, if a person tries to evade the lawful seizure of property ordered by a court or any other competent authority by either physically transferring the property to someone else or by transferring its ownership rights to someone else to avoid seizure of property.

Section 244 on the other hand states if any person accepts, receives or claims any property which is being transferred or received for the purpose of preventing its lawful seizure shall be considered an offender if he performs any of the following actions with regard to property that has been ordered to be seized. This not only refers to physically accepting or receiving a property but also refers to claiming interest. This means claiming the ownership rights of someone else’s property in order to fraudulently prevent its lawful seizure.

Further, the section also clarifies that the timing of performing the above defined actions is irrelevant. It says that the actions above will be an offence if they are fraudulently performed to prevent lawful seizure under either of the following circumstances:

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