India is in the midst of its most ambitious decriminalisation exercise in history. The Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act (2026) decriminalises or rationalises over 717 offences across 79 Central Acts, replacing imprisonment with civil penalties, administrative adjudication and compounding across sectors from banking to intellectual property. The Finance Bill (2026) grades punishment for tax defaults by quantum rather than mere non-compliance, and in Sandesara-Sterling Biotech the Supreme Court has endorsed settlement-driven resolution of high-value economic offences.

Yet India still recognises neither deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) nor non-prosecution agreements and plea bargaining remains barred for offences carrying more than seven years, for those affecting the socio-economic condition of the country and for offences against women and children. The case for a DPA regime nevertheless resurfaces, driven by the pressure behind the UK’s Crime and Courts Act (2013) and the US Department of Justice’s policy: corporate fraud prosecutions are slow and, evidentially, punishing and prosecuting a company can do more economic damage than the offence itself.

Where should the line fall between a technical default and a wilful economic offence? Does substituting monetary penalties for imprisonment simply make non-compliance a cost of doing business for those who can afford to pay? One side will argue that an enforcement architecture already overburdened — the Serious Fraud Investigations Office, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the Enforcement Directorate under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act would recover state losses faster under a judicially supervised DPA regime. The other will argue that prosecutorial discretion is contested enough in white-collar enforcement, that judicial capacity to scrutinise negotiated settlements is unproven and that DPAs let large corporates buy an accountability individuals cannot. Audience voting is to be undertaken.