KSLU Solved Question Papers
White Collar Crimes
Previous Year Question Paper with Solution
B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) · Sem 10
2024 Aug Examination
munotes.in
Mumbai
B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) Sem 10 White Collar Crimes 2024 Aug Question Paper with Solutions
First published on munotes.in on 21 October 2026.
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Contents
The questions below are the paper as Karnataka State Law University set it at the 2024 Aug examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2024 Aug examination, reproduced as Karnataka State Law University set them, in the order it set them. Long reading passages are shortened to their first and last lines and our summary; the original paper prints them in full. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 80 · 20 questions answered
Instructions printed on the paper
- N.B. (1) Answer all five Units. (2) One essay type question and short note/ problem is compulsory from each Unit. (3) Figures to the right indicate marks. (4) Answer should be written either in English or Kannada completely.
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
Q1
Unit I
(a)Define White Collar Crime and discuss White Collar Crimes in India.[10]
Answer
For full marks, cover: Sutherland's definition (1939 address, 1949 book) and its four elements; the main features of white collar crime; its forms in India (corruption, tax evasion and black money, adulteration, bank and corporate fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, fraud on public schemes, professional deviance); the Indian recognition (Santhanam Committee 1964, Law Commission's 29th and 47th Reports); the Indian laws; Sanjay Chandra, Ramesh Gelli and Vijay Madanlal Choudhary; why it flourishes.
Definition
The term white collar crime was introduced by the American criminologist Edwin H. Sutherland in his presidential address to the American Sociological Society in 1939. He developed it in his book White Collar Crime (1949). He defined it as "a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation".
The definition has four elements:
- A crime, that is, conduct punishable by law, even if it is usually handled by regulators.
- Committed by a person, though often for an organisation.
- Of respectability and high social status.
- In the course of his occupation. A rich man who murders his wife is not a white collar criminal, because the crime has nothing to do with his work.
Sutherland studied the seventy largest American corporations. He found that every one had adverse decisions against it, on average about fourteen. That showed crime is not only a product of poverty, and that a theory of crime must explain the offending of the respectable too.
Features
- The offender is respectable, so he is believed and rarely suspected.
- The victim is diffuse: the public, the revenue, consumers or depositors, who often do not know.
- The method is deception and abuse of trust, not force.
- The harm is often huge but invisible.
- Proof is documentary and technical, so detection and conviction are rare.
- The response is often a penalty or settlement, not punishment.
White collar crime in India
Recognition. The Santhanam Committee on Prevention of Corruption (1964) found that corruption had become organised. It was fed by unaccounted money held by people in trade and industry. The Law Commission's 29th Report (1966) and 47th Report (1972) studied social and economic offences and their trial and punishment.
Main forms.
- Corruption by public servants and politicians.
- Tax evasion and black money, which feed a parallel economy.
- Adulteration of food and drugs.
- Bank and corporate fraud, such as loans given against worthless security.
- Securities fraud and market manipulation.
- Money laundering through shell companies and hawala.
- Fraud on public schemes, such as diverted foodgrain, scholarships and wages.
- Professional deviance by doctors, lawyers and others.
The Indian laws
The main laws are the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 (amended in 2018), the Prevention of Money-laundering Act 2002 and the Companies Act 2013. The Food Safety and Standards Act 2006, the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act 1988 and the tax laws add to them. Sections 316 and 318 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 punish criminal breach of trust and cheating. Section 111 punishes organised crime, and its definition expressly includes "economic offence", such as hawala and frauds on banks.
The courts
Seriousness of economic offences. In Sanjay Chandra v. Central Bureau of Investigation, (2012) 1 SCC 40, the accused in the 2G spectrum case had been in custody for months. The Supreme Court granted bail. It held that the seriousness of an economic charge matters, but refusing bail cannot be used as punishment before trial.
Reaching private bankers. In Central Bureau of Investigation, Bank Securities and Fraud Cell v. Ramesh Gelli, decided on 23 February 2016, the chairman and officers of a private bank, Global Trust Bank, were prosecuted for corruption. The Supreme Court held them to be public servants under the Prevention of Corruption Act. It read section 46A of the Banking Regulation Act 1949 with the 1988 Act's purpose of widening the definition.
Taking back the proceeds. In Vijay Madanlal Choudhary v. Union of India, (2023) 12 SCC 1, the Court largely upheld the money laundering law. That included its attachment powers and the strict bail conditions in section 45.
Why it flourishes in India
- Wide official discretion in permits and contracts.
- A large cash and informal economy.
- Weak audit, slow trials and few specialised investigators.
- Political protection and public tolerance of the offenders.
Conclusion. White collar crime, in Sutherland's words, is crime by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation. In India it takes the forms of corruption, tax evasion, adulteration, bank and market fraud and money laundering, as the Santhanam Committee first recorded. The law has responded with special statutes and courts that treat economic offences seriously, as Sanjay Chandra, Ramesh Gelli and Vijay Madanlal Choudhary show. The real gap is in detection and speedy trial, not in the number of laws.
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