There are some who have written or spoken about classifying the terror attack near the Red Fort in Delhi as a white collar crime. This is on the basis that the perpetrators are doctors who normally wear an white apron to work.
Grok defines a white collar crime thus: “White-collar crime refers to non-violent, financially motivated offenses committed by professionals or businesses in positions of trust, typically in commercial or governmental settings. Coined by sociologist Edwin Sutherland in 1939, it involves “respectable” individuals exploiting their roles for gain”.
It further says: “A robbery committed by a well-dressed person in a suit is not a white-collar crime. Robbery, by definition, involves force or threat of force to take property (e.g., holding up a bank with a gun or demanding money at knifepoint). This makes it a violent, street-level crime, regardless of the perpetrator’s clothing or social status”.
But, the Red Fort attackers are terrorists who used very violent methods that killed at least nine innocent people and injuring many. Their motivation was their ideology and a means to force it on a population through terror. Calling it a white collar crime, or even saying that the criminals are white collar people, does serious injustice to the dialogue that is necessary to resolve such attacks of terrorism.
