India, Dec. 14 -- The Bombay High Court has ruled that the Indian Penal Code (IPC) does not recognise the concept of vicarious liability, meaning that senior company officials cannot be held criminally responsible for acts committed by others unless a specific role or negligence is directly attributed to them. Based on this, the court quashed a criminal negligence case against the managing director of a construction firm and its civil engineer, following the death of a two-and-a-half-year-old child who drowned in a construction pit.

A division bench of justices Urmila Joshi Phalke and Nandesh Deshpande held that criminal responsibility cannot be imposed on company executives because of their position, unless there they are accused of spe...