Indian Government is Planning to Prosecute Crypto Investors

The government of India has recently chartered a proposal for crypto regulations in the South Asian country. The bill that is yet to be presented aims to impose strict limitations on cryptocurrency trading. The crypto bill by the Indian lawmakers was recently reviewed by the analysts at Reuters. As reported by the media, the bill is set to be formally presented in parliament for the winter session hearings.

One of the most concerning clauses of the bill suggests treating cryptocurrency violations under the criminal code of conduct and classifying it as cognizable offenses. It means that the law enforcement agents will be able to arrest the violators without a warrant and detain them without providing the option for bail. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that once the bill receives approval from the union cabinet, it will be moved forward.

As reported by media experts, the cryptocurrency bill prepared by the Indian parliament calls for the prohibition of allocating the utilities like a medium of exchange, adding to reserves, conducting sales, mining, unit of account, and also as a store of value. All of these use cases are covered under the umbrella term of legal tender status.

An independent commercial consultant named Rahul Gaitonde claims that such harsh impositions from the government do not come as a surprise. He explained that in 2019, another crypto bill drafted under the title ‘Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulations of Official Digital Currency’ planned to prosecute the defaulters as ‘cognizant-offense’. The local media outlet NDTV claimed that the proposed jail time for the offenders is 1-5 years; meanwhile, entities and individuals can be penalized up to $2.65 million for violations.

Anirudh Rastogi is the founder of the Ikigai law firm in India. He recently claimed that if the recently speculated crypto bill is passed in the parliament, it will affect the 10 million crypto investors in the country. He further explained that the NFT developers and blockchain innovations are going to halt these chaotic policies.

As per Gaitonde, the recent crypto restrictions will taper the scope of crypto trading away from the majority of the population by limiting access to centralized crypto tokens. He added that centralized exchanges are very unlikely to list a massive number of Defi markets that will block dApps, NFT gaming, non-custodial wallets, and almost every decentralized blockchain project.