Knock Knock

The article stresses building a robust internal response system—pre-assigning roles, ensuring all communication is routed through legal teams, and maintaining detailed real-time records of officers’ actions and seized materials. This documentation becomes crucial for challenging procedural violations later. It also underlines that while companies must cooperate with lawful investigations, they retain important rights. These include verifying officials’ credentials, asserting legal privilege, and relying on constitutional protections like the right to privacy established in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India. Overall, the key message is that effective defence is not improvised during a raid but built in advance through preparation, legal awareness, and disciplined response protocols. According to Amar Gupta, joint managing partner of JSA in New Delhi, this point “has significant implications for internal investigation materials, strategy documents and compliance assessments generated by in-house teams”. Gupta, who founded the firm’s disputes practice, says a compliance function designed entirely around in-house counsel provides no privilege protection under Indian law. Read more