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Sanofi India Ltd. v. Central Bureau of Investigation

Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 957Decided 7 Sept 2026
Crl.A. No.-004250-004250 - 2026 (arising out of SLP (Crl.) No. 3597 of 2019)
Justice J.B. Pardiwala · Justice Manoj Misra

Background

Sanofi India Ltd., a pharmaceutical company, supplied medicines to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) between 2011 and 2016. A CBI FIR alleged that Dr. P. Anand, a BARC Scientific Officer, conspired with several pharmaceutical suppliers, including Sanofi, to procure medicines at inflated prices by misclassifying items, excluding competing bidders, or bypassing the lowest bidder, causing a wrongful loss to BARC of about Rs. 3.5 lakh and a wrongful gain to the accused, with Dr. Anand also allegedly receiving a bribe of Rs. 42,750 from Sanofi. Sanofi was charge-sheeted as an accused company (Accused No. 2) alongside Dr. Anand, but no individual employee or officer of Sanofi was named as an accused. Sanofi sought to quash the proceedings before the Karnataka High Court, arguing that a corporation cannot be prosecuted for an offence requiring a "guilty mind" (mens rea), like criminal conspiracy or corruption, unless the specific individual who is the company's "directing mind" (its alter ego) is also identified and arraigned. The High Court dismissed the quashing petition, and Sanofi appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

In a wide-ranging judgment, the Supreme Court traced the evolution of corporate criminal liability in England (the strict "identification principle" from Tesco Supermarkets v. Nattrass, later relaxed by the "Meridian" and Barclays lines of cases) and in India, and laid down a clarified framework for how a corporation's mens rea is to be attributed through the acts of natural persons acting on its behalf. The Court held that identifying and arraigning a specific "directing mind" individual is not a mandatory precondition for prosecuting a company for an offence requiring mens rea: that requirement applies only where a statute expressly creates vicarious liability with such a condition precedent (as under Section 141 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, distinguished from this case). Instead, at the quashing stage, courts need only check, broadly, whether the chargesheet shows that some natural person(s) acted on the company's behalf, that the action is linked to the alleged offence, and that the surrounding circumstances do not make the existence of mens rea inherently absurd or improbable: a threshold, not a detailed, inquiry, with the rest to be tested at trial. Applying this framework, the Court found the chargesheet against Sanofi met this threshold and upheld the High Court's refusal to quash the proceedings, dismissing the appeal.

Lesson Learnt

A company can be criminally prosecuted for offences requiring criminal intent even if no specific director or employee is separately named as an accused: Indian law does not require identifying the corporation's "directing mind" as a precondition, except where a specific statute (like cheque-bounce cases under the NI Act) explicitly makes individual liability dependent on the company itself being an accused; for other offences, it is enough that the chargesheet shows some person acted on the company's behalf in circumstances suggesting wrongful intent, leaving the merits to be decided at trial.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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