By Vikrant Rana and Apalka Bareja
Introduction
The registration of a criminal case against five daycare workers at a crèche operating within Capgemini Technology Services India Limited’s Brookefield campus in Bengaluru has brought renewed attention to a persistent gap in Indian law: the absence of a uniform, enforceable regulatory framework for workplace and standalone childcare facilities. The allegations — involving toddlers left in the care of employer-provided crèche staff — raise questions spanning criminal law, child protection legislation, employer obligations under labour law, and, increasingly, data protection law given the role that recorded video evidence played in bringing the matter to light.
This alert summarises the reported facts, the applicable legal provisions, and the structural regulatory gaps that the case has surfaced, drawing on expert commentary from the early childhood education sector alongside contemporaneous news reporting.
Background: the Capgemini Crèche Case
According to reporting in various news articles, an FIR was registered on June 29, 2026,[1] at the HAL Police Station, Bengaluru, naming five caregivers — Manjula, Vijayalakshmi, Bhavani, Sindhu, and Bindu — employed at a baby-care facility inside Capgemini’s Brookefield campus. The complaint was lodged by Tilakesh Kumar, described as a legal-cum-probation officer with the District Child Protection Unit, invoking provisions relating to criminal intimidation and cruelty to children.
The complaint states that the matter came to light on June 25, 2026, after videos — reportedly circulated via WhatsApp and showing children crying while being subjected to alleged mistreatment — prompted the complainant to approach the police. The specific allegations, as reported, include locking crying children inside washing machines, forcing them into narrow, water-filled pipes, confining them in bathroom spaces, and using toilet jet sprays on them, including directing water into their mouths when they would not stop crying.
Saidulu Adavath, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Whitefield Division), confirmed that an investigation has been initiated and that notices would be served on the accused. Capgemini, in a public statement, confirmed it was cooperating with authorities and had temporarily closed the on-campus daycare facility as a precautionary measure. The allegations are at the investigation stage and have not been established or adjudicated.
Applicable Legal and Regulatory Framework
- Criminal Law Provisions
The reported charges of “criminal intimidation” and “cruelty to children” correspond broadly to offences under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023[2] (which has replaced the Indian Penal Code, 1860, for offences committed after July 1, 2024) read with the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015. Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act[3] specifically penalises cruelty to a child by any person having actual charge of, or control over, that child — a provision squarely relevant to caregivers in a custodial role such as crèche staff. - Employer Obligations for On-Campus Childcare
The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017, mandates that every establishment employing 50 or more employees provide a crèche facility, with the entitlement extending to four visits a day by the mother, which shall also include interval of rest allowed to her. Notably, the statute mandates the provision of a facility but does not itself prescribe operational safety standards, staffing ratios, background-verification requirements, or grievance-redressal mechanisms for such crèches. The only central articulation of such standards is the National Minimum Guidelines for Setting up and Running Crèches[4] under the Maternity Benefit Act, 2017[5] (issued by the Ministry of Women and Child Development), which are advisory and non-statutory and carry no independent enforcement mechanism — a gap that becomes acutely visible in cases such as this one.The obligation has since been carried forward into Section 67 of the Code on Social Security, 2020, which substantially reproduces the fifty-employee threshold, the option of a crèche maintained separately or as a common facility, and the four-visits entitlement.[6]
- State-Level Crèche and Daycare Regulation
The crèche mandate under the Maternity Benefit Act is labour-welfare legislation, referable to Entry 24 of the Concurrent List, whereas early childhood and pre-school education is referable to the separate education entry (Entry 25). [7]Early childhood education is governed as a concurrent subject, with standalone daycare and crèche facilities falling, at the central level, loosely under the Ministry of Women and Child Development, while pre-school education aspects are addressed by state education departments — resulting in regulatory overlap rather than a single accountable authority. According to Swati Popat Vats, President of the Early Childhood Association (ECA), India, only four states — Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka[8], and Haryana — currently have specific regulations governing crèches or daycare facilities, and even these derive largely from the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017, rather than constituting comprehensive, standalone licensing regimes. - Data Protection Dimension — The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023
The case also carries a data protection dimension. Images and video recordings of children are treated as personal data under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act), and Section 9 of the Act[9] imposes heightened obligations — including verifiable parental or guardian consent — on entities processing children’s personal data. This has two implications for crèche and daycare operators. First, CCTV surveillance systems installed in such facilities must be assessed against DPDP Act consent and purpose-limitation requirements, since footage of children constitutes personal data whose collection, storage, and access must be justified and secured. Second, as commentary from the ECA notes, live-streaming of CCTV feeds to parents — as distinct from securely retained, access-controlled recordings — raises materially greater privacy risk, since such feeds may be visible to persons beyond the intended parent, including domestic staff or drivers with access to a household device, and are more susceptible to misuse.Separately, the circulation of the abuse footage itself via WhatsApp — even where done to raise an alarm and prompt intervention — illustrates the tension between the protective purpose served by such sharing and the DPDP Act’s restrictions on further processing or dissemination of children’s personal data without authorisation, a nuance that institutions and complainants alike should be sensitised to when such evidence surfaces in future cases.
Regulatory Gaps Highlighted by the Case
Expert commentary accompanying coverage of the case — including remarks by Ms. Vats to The Indian Express — identifies several structural gaps in India’s childcare regulatory landscape:
- Absence of a comprehensive, uniformly enforced national licensing framework for standalone crèches and daycare centres, unlike jurisdictions such as Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which maintain dedicated regulatory regimes for early childhood care.[10]
- Fragmented central oversight, with early childhood care nominally under the Ministry of Women and Child Development while related educational aspects sit with state education departments, neither of which possesses comprehensive licensing authority over private crèches.
- Inconsistent CCTV compliance: while several states mandate a minimum 30-day CCTV retention period, monitoring of actual compliance by private daycares is reportedly limited.
- No standardised requirement for caregiver background verification, police clearance, or minimum child-care training — a gap the ECA has stated it is seeking to address through a proposed skill-based certification course for helper staff.
- Limited statutory grievance-redressal mechanisms specific to daycare settings, leaving parents largely reliant on criminal complaints after the fact rather than preventive institutional channels.
Practitioner and Employer Takeaways
- Employers maintaining on-campus crèche facilities should commission independent audits of staff qualifications, police verification status, and training records, rather than relying solely on the facility operator’s representations.
- CCTV and surveillance arrangements at crèche facilities should be reviewed against DPDP Act obligations — favouring securely retained, access-controlled recordings over live-streaming, with documented consent and data-retention policies.
- Establish a written, accessible grievance-redressal mechanism for parents that operates independently of the crèche operator, with a clear escalation pathway to the District Child Protection Unit where warranted.
- Map applicable state-specific crèche regulations to the facility’s location — currently most developed in Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, and Haryana — align operations with the National Minimum Guidelines and maintain compliance documentation accordingly.
- Maintain documented evidence of caregiver training and, where available, third-party skill certification, in anticipation of both regulatory scrutiny and reputational risk management.
- Develop a crisis-response protocol for allegations of this nature, including temporary suspension of the facility, preservation of CCTV evidence, and coordinated engagement with law enforcement and child protection authorities.
- Monitor legislative developments in this space; the recurrence of such incidents increases the likelihood of a dedicated national regulatory framework for daycare and crèche facilities in the medium term , as well as the eventual commencement of the crèche provisions of the Code on Social Security, 2020.
Conclusion
The Capgemini crèche case is, at the time of writing, under active police investigation, and the allegations against the accused remain to be established in accordance with law. Independently of the outcome, the case has crystallised long-standing concerns within the early childhood education sector regarding the adequacy of India’s crèche regulation — concerns that intersect with employer obligations under labour law, child protection statutes, and, increasingly, the data protection obligations attaching to surveillance and recorded evidence of minors. Employers operating on-campus childcare facilities would be well served by proactively auditing their arrangements against this evolving legal landscape rather than awaiting further regulatory or enforcement action.
[2] The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (Act 45 of 2023) replaced the Indian Penal Code, 1860 for offences committed on or after 1 July 2024.
[3] Section 75, Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 (Act 2 of 2016), penalising assault, abandonment, abuse, exposure or wilful neglect of a child by a person having actual charge of, or control over, the child.
[4] National Minimum Guidelines for Setting up and Running Crèches under the Maternity Benefit Act, 2017, Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India (2017). https://www.ugc.gov.in/pdfnews/7021693_National-Minimum-Standards-and-Protocol-for-Creches.pdf
[5] Section 11A, Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 (Act 53 of 1961), inserted by the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 (Act 6 of 2017) with effect from 1 July 2017.
[6] Section 67, Code on Social Security, 2020 (Act 36 of 2020), which substantially reproduces the crèche obligation in Section 11A of the 1961 Act.
[7] https://www.mea.gov.in/images/pdf1/S7.pdf
[8] https://labour.karnataka.gov.in/uploads/media_to_upload1741601782.pdf
[9] https://www.meity.gov.in/static/uploads/2024/06/2bf1f0e9f04e6fb4f8fef35e82c42aa5.pdf