The Dynamics of Corporate Criminal Liability in India

For a long time, criminal liability of corporations remained a niche and an unaddressed issue. But times have changed and a corporate entity now cannot escape criminal liability for the reason that it has “no soul to damn and no body to kick”. To get over the problem of imputing intention to the company, Identification Approach method was evolved in the UK which considers the intention and act of the senior management of the company as that of the company itself. In contrast, in the United States, the approach has always been to employ the device of vicarious liability. All that is required in the US is that an employee should have committed the offense in the course of employment. However, the law in India has not properly addressed the problem of corporate criminal liability relating to mens rea offenses. Higher judiciary has expressed different opinions in different judgments for the questions like whether a corporation can commit an offense that requires mens rea, and what punishment is to be imposed on the corporation when imprisonment is mandatory? Though the area of law on corporate criminal liability is continuously evolving in India, what is required is the certainty. This paper makes an attempt to analyze the legal systems that deal with the corporate criminal liability in countries like the UK and US, with special reference to India.