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Dear lawyers,
I would like to know what course law will take
if I criminally sue a US citizen who committed a crime
in India. The business is a little tricky.
A famous publishing house namely Encyclopaedia Britannica
published a fraudulent reference set in a regional language
of India. The publication was in collaboration with a local
publishing house. Encyclopaedia Britannica's subsidairy
Britannica India is the party who is directly behind the project.
The editor of the book, as is seen from the editor's preface,
is the executive editor of EB. However, it is unlikely that this person
knows the regional language. He may not have come to India at all.
The editor's preface has unscrupulous lies.
The whole project is a swindle. The book contains thousands of errors
and hundreds of idiotic blunders. (To give you a taste: The book says that
grapevine bears watermelon and honeysuckles.)
Some people have filed a case against the people behind the fraud for
holding out false promises and thus prompting people to part with
their money. This amounts to cheating and it is a criminal offence.
Further, the book violates the rules concerning book publishing.
In India a book should bear the name of the printer and publisher.
This book fails to give adequate information and further
misrepresents the printing firm.
To my knowledge, extradition agreement is extant between India and US.
If a US citizen is sued in a local court of India, it is unlikely that
he would honour the summons and appear before the court.
At what stage does this extradition treaty come into play in such matters?
Is it limited to grave offences alone?
Can the India office (which is a subsidaiary of the EB) be held accountable
for the offence of the editor, too?
Would be thankful it you would advice.
Rajeev
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rajeev_vijayanath@yahoo.com (rajeev) wrote in message news:<3ee19550.0409190934.44a34fb8@posting.google.com>...
Dear lawyers,
I would like to know what course law will take
if I criminally sue a US citizen who committed a crime
in India. The business is a little tricky.
A famous publishing house namely Encyclopaedia Britannica
published a fraudulent reference set in a regional language
of India. The publication was in collaboration with a local
publishing house. Encyclopaedia Britannica's subsidairy
Britannica India is the party who is directly behind the project.
The editor of the book, as is seen from the editor's preface,
is the executive editor of EB. However, it is unlikely that this person
knows the regional language. He may not have come to India at all.
The editor's preface has unscrupulous lies.
The whole project is a swindle. The book contains thousands of errors
and hundreds of idiotic blunders. (To give you a taste: The book says that
grapevine bears watermelon and honeysuckles.)
Some people have filed a case against the people behind the fraud for
holding out false promises and thus prompting people to part with
their money. This amounts to cheating and it is a criminal offence.
Further, the book violates the rules concerning book publishing.
In India a book should bear the name of the printer and publisher.
This book fails to give adequate information and further
misrepresents the printing firm.
To my knowledge, extradition agreement is extant between India and US.
If a US citizen is sued in a local court of India, it is unlikely that
he would honour the summons and appear before the court.
At what stage does this extradition treaty come into play in such matters?
Is it limited to grave offences alone?
Can the India office (which is a subsidaiary of the EB) be held accountable
for the offence of the editor, too?
Would be thankful it you would advice.
Rajeev
This is not advice; if you want advice, retain a solicitor and pay him
for his advice. This is just my opinion.
There is a summary of the 1997 extradition treaty at
http://www.indiagov.org/pic/prje25.htm
Note that an extraditable offense is one that is punishable by more
than one year imprisonment under the laws of both nations. So the
first questions of importance are whether there is probable cause to
believe any US citizen actually committed a crime in this matter, as
well as whether the crime is serious enough to clear the extradition
threshold.
Even if there were any kind of case that EB or some US subsidiary of
EB actually committed a fraud, it would surely be difficult and could
well be impossible to prove that any actual person (officer, director,
manager, whatever) is guilty.
In this case, any US branch of EB and any US-based EB employee is
certainly going to contend that they had no knowledge of the bogus
encyclopedias being sold by BI. And they will probably bring good
arguments that they did not, likely to the effect that the experts who
vouched for the quality of the encyclopedia were vetted by BI, and EB
justifiably relied on BI's representation that the encyclopedia was
sound and properly reviewed.
In short, if there has been any fraud, for which your posting falls
short of presenting a complete case, it will probably be on the
shoulders of Britannica India, and it will almost certainly be of
little use to go after the US parent or anybody associated with the US
parent.
--
Not a lawyer,
Chris Green
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rajeev_vijayanath@yahoo.com (rajeev) wrote in
news:3ee19550.0409190934.44a34fb8@posting.google.com:
Dear lawyers,
I would like to know what course law will take
if I criminally sue a US citizen who committed a crime
in India. The business is a little tricky.
A famous publishing house namely Encyclopaedia Britannica
published a fraudulent reference set in a regional language
of India. The publication was in collaboration with a local
publishing house. Encyclopaedia Britannica's subsidairy
Britannica India is the party who is directly behind the project.
The editor of the book, as is seen from the editor's preface,
is the executive editor of EB. However, it is unlikely that this person
knows the regional language. He may not have come to India at all.
The editor's preface has unscrupulous lies.
The whole project is a swindle. The book contains thousands of errors
and hundreds of idiotic blunders. (To give you a taste: The book says
that grapevine bears watermelon and honeysuckles.)
Some people have filed a case against the people behind the fraud for
holding out false promises and thus prompting people to part with
their money. This amounts to cheating and it is a criminal offence.
Further, the book violates the rules concerning book publishing.
In India a book should bear the name of the printer and publisher.
This book fails to give adequate information and further
misrepresents the printing firm.
To my knowledge, extradition agreement is extant between India and US.
If a US citizen is sued in a local court of India, it is unlikely that
he would honour the summons and appear before the court.
At what stage does this extradition treaty come into play in such
matters? Is it limited to grave offences alone?
Can the India office (which is a subsidaiary of the EB) be held
accountable for the offence of the editor, too?
Would be thankful it you would advice.
Rajeev
Rajeev, I am not a lawyer, but you are confusing suing someone (civil law)
with prosecuting them for an offence (criminal law). India is a common law
country, and the same basic principles should apply in India as in England
or in the US.
Extradition applies for criminal offences, not for civil suits. Depending
on the details of the treaty, there is always some minimum threshold for
extradition, i.e. OK for murder but not for a parking offence. At the very
least, it is highly unlikely that an offence is extraditable unless it is
also arrestable.
Of course, it is possible to file charges for an offence and then later
file a civil suit for damages, normally only after the criminal case is
over. If they are convicted, then a civil suit is likely to succeed, and
even if they are not, a civil suit may still succeed, as it is based on a
balance of probabilities instead of the criminal law standard of no
reasonable doubt.
If there is no appropriate criminal offence that may have been committed,
or if there is but it is not extraditable, then you can only have a civil
suit. As there is an Indian subsidiary, it would make most sense to sue
them, possibly also including the parent company. The Indian subsidiary
will have assets in India, which is important if you hope to actually
collect damages from them. That brings me to another point, that you can
sue a company but you need real persons to bring criminal charges against.
If the main issue here is fraud, then that is both a criminal offence and a
tort (something you can sue for). I am guessing that criminal fraud
probably is extraditable??? Bottom line - you need to see a lawyer
qualified in India.
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