One of the most scariest and intimidating situations for any person and more so for employees is being charged in criminal prosecutions in their official capacities on behalf of company/firm, in cases that purely arise out of commercial transactions.
There are plethora of judgments that state that commercial disputes should be handled by commercial courts. Despite that we find that criminal justice machinery is set into motion by people to settle their commercial scores. One of the aspects which can be seen is the lack of understanding of recently enacted laws by law enforcement agencies who still end up applying the provisions of Indian Penal Code, 1806 for criminal breach of trust or cheating. This issue further gets complicated when police complaints are filed for infringement of intellectual property rights, since the Trademark Act, 1999 or Copyright Act 1957, both have provisions which are classified as cognisable offences.
Please click here to read the full article by Dheeraj Nair, Manish Jha, and Shruti Dass, published in Modaq and Lexology.
Practicing as a lawyer since 2000 in Indian courts and tribunals. Appeared in twenty High Courts of India and conducted several arbitrations.