White-collar and cyber defence

White-collar and cyber matters sit at the point where a business's ordinary conduct (a transaction, a data practice, a regulatory filing) becomes the subject of a criminal or quasi-criminal investigation, and the defence work involved differs materially from ordinary civil litigation.

Cybercrime and digital evidence

Offences involving computer systems, digital fraud and technology-related complaints proceed under the Information Technology Act alongside the general criminal law. A significant part of how these matters are contested turns on the digital evidence itself: how it was collected, whether the chain of custody was maintained, and whether it meets the standard for admissibility that electronic evidence requires. Advisory and representation on these questions applies equally to a complainant seeking to rely on digital evidence and a person defending against it.

Corporate investigations

Where a company's affairs come under scrutiny from the Serious Fraud Investigation Office or the Central Bureau of Investigation, the response generally involves an internal investigation run alongside the regulatory or criminal proceeding, and a coordinated approach to what is disclosed to investigators and when. Directors and officers of the company can face individual exposure that is distinct from the company's own, which affects how the internal investigation and any external cooperation is structured.

Statutory offence defence

Directors, officers and companies can face prosecution under specific provisions of the Companies Act, 2013 for defaults in filings, disclosures or governance obligations, and separately under the Foreign Exchange Management Act for contraventions in cross-border transactions or holdings. Each of these carries its own defences, its own adjudicating or prosecuting authority, and its own timeline, and a company facing more than one such proceeding at the same time has to manage them as related but procedurally distinct matters.

What is at stake

These proceedings frequently move faster, and carry more immediate consequences for individuals, than ordinary civil litigation, since search, seizure and summons can precede any formal charge. What a company or an individual facing investigation has to decide, early, is how to respond to the investigating authority without prejudicing a position that may later need to be defended in a separate criminal or regulatory proceeding.