If you borrow money, you should be mindful to pay the same on time. However, life doesn’t always go as planned and you could find yourself in a position where you are unable to repay the money. In a situation where you had used security such as a house or a plot of land, the lender will exercise their statutory power of sale. This means that they will start the process of auctioning your property in order to recover the principal they gave you, as well as the interest. The law is such that at least six (6) months would have to lapse before the lender is able to auction your house. That being said, the focus of this article is not the secured loan, rather, it is the unsecured loan. The specific question is whether a lender can have you arrested for failure to pay a debt. The quick and easy answer is a resounding ‘no’! Loans belong in the realm of civil law. There are remedies open to the lender in a civil court. However, out of sheer frustration, and in a context of living in a corrupt society, it is much easier for a lender to ‘bribe’ a police official and task them with your arrest. Given that a civil debt is not a criminal matter, the police can only but contour a charge of ‘stealing money by false pretenses’. And as the police official does so, he himself knows that default to repay a loan is a matter to be handled in the civil courts and not the criminal courts.