White Collar Crime: The Stance of India

White Collar Crime refers to those offences which are non – violent in nature and are usually focused on undue financial gain and in some cases prevention of financial loss, through means such as deceit, forgery, concealment etc. White Collar Crime is on the rise with India seeing an alarming exponential growth in such offences in the past decade, therefore, emphasising the need to study the provisions of law in regard to these offences and analyse them in order to understand whether the legal framework to deal with these crimes is competent and robust enough to deter potential violators and punish offenders. For this purpose, this paper shall explore the stance of the Indian Legal System in relation to white-collar crime, in light of various legislations with a specific focus on Chapter 17 and Chapter 18 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and Chapter 29 of the Companies Act, 2013; along with the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 and the recently legislated Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018. As a rapidly developing economy with the kind of economic and industry growth trajectory India is following, the opportunity cost of an increase in White Collar Crime is inevitable, therefore, the need for strict provisions of law to deter and punish such offenders is emphasised and ergo highlighted in this paper.