Authorised but Not Autonomous: Loss Allocation in India’s Coerced Push Payment Frauds
India allocates loss from electronic banking fraud through a Reserve Bank circular of 6 July 2017, which distributes liability across three tiers, each presupposing that the disputed transaction was unauthorised. The fastest-growing category of Indian payment fraud does not fit that premise. In frauds described as “digital arrest”, the victim is persuaded by impersonators of […]
Authorised but Not Autonomous: Loss Allocation in India’s Coerced Push Payment Frauds
India allocates loss from electronic banking fraud through a Reserve Bank circular of 6 July 2017, which distributes liability across three tiers, each presupposing that the disputed transaction was unauthorised. The fastest-growing category of Indian payment fraud does not fit that premise. In frauds described as “digital arrest”, the victim is persuaded by impersonators of […]
Who Pays when the Machine Pays? Legal Liability for Agentic UPI Transactions in India
India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is entering a potentially significant transition from human-initiated digital payments to payments executed by software agents acting under pre-authorised instructions. In September 2026, reporting indicated that the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) was preparing a Unified Agent Protocol under which artificial-intelligence agents could execute limited UPI payments without requiring […]
Intercountry Adoption in Nepal: An Analysis from International Law and Child Rights Perspectives
Intercountry adoption falls at the intersection of family law, human rights law and international law. In Nepal, adoption law has shifted from a family centred institution towards a framework centred on the best interests of the child. The National Civil (Code) Act 2017 regulates both domestic and intercountry adoption, while the Act Relating to Children […]
Fintech — Legal Accountability for AI-Driven “Buy Now Pay Later” and Algorithmic Credit Scoring
From being an obscure checkout option, Buy Now, Pay Later (“BNPL”) is now one of the fastest-growing categories of unsecured consumer credit in India, with the domestic BNPL market valued at around USD 2.7 billion for 2024 and expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 34 per cent between 2022 […]
When Law Meets Generative AI: Preserving Judicial Integrity through Human Verification
Artificial intelligence has moved from being a peripheral technological tool to an increasingly consequential component of professional decision-making. The legal system presents a particularly sensitive setting because judicial reasoning depends upon the accurate identification, interpretation and application of authoritative sources. The Supreme Court of India’s decision in Pooja Ramesh Singh v. Jammu and Kashmir Bank […]
Digital Arrest Scams: Need For a Separate Cybercrime Framework in India
Digital arrest scams have turned out to be one of the most damaging cyber-enabled economic offences in India. In this kind of scam, the fraudster pretends to be a police official, investigating agency, or even a judge over video call and threatens the victim to hand over money to protect them from arrest. Unlike typical […]
Algorithmic Termination of Platform Gig Workers and the Constitutional Case for a Right to Reasoned Decision-Making in India
The Indian platform economy engages an estimated 7.7 million gig workers, a figure the NITI Aayog projects will reach 23.5 million by 2029-30. Managerial functions once performed by human supervisors — allocation, evaluation, discipline, and termination — have migrated to algorithmic systems. Termination is the most consequential: a worker whose account is deactivated by an […]
From Mapping Risks to Governing Power: Reassessing the Human-Rights Project of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer merely a technological subject. Its deployment in policing, employment, healthcare, migration control, content moderation, financial services, education and political communication has transformed questions that were traditionally understood as matters of technological design into questions of law, accountability and human dignity. The regulatory challenge is therefore not simply whether AI […]
Beyond the Hype: Artificial Intelligence, Institutional Failure and the Limits of Prediction
Artificial intelligence is increasingly presented not merely as a technological development but as a force capable of transforming institutions, labour markets, public administration and democratic life. The legal significance of that transformation lies less in the abstract question of whether machines will become “intelligent” than in the concrete question of who is permitted to deploy […]