Can Employers Really Take Back a Bonus After It's Been Paid? Let's Discuss!

This is Srinivas working in an MNC. I would like to know if a bonus, once paid by the employer to the employee, can be recovered after a couple of months. Can there be a circumstance where an employer comes back and informs the employee that they will recover the bonus that was already paid? Thanks for your help.

Please confirm what type of bonus was paid to the employee. Was it a statutory bonus paid under the provisions of the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965, or was it a performance bonus? Once paid, both cannot be recovered per se. We need to know the circumstances under which the employer has come up with this kind of quaint demand.

As Dinesh says, statutory bonus can definitely not be recovered from the employee.

In case of incentive bonus, the only circumstances I can think of where such a thing will happen is if it was given based on falsified data or the achievement of the milestone was misrepresented.