India, July 29 -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that the Centre may consider formally defining digital arrest in criminal law and declaring it as a standalone offence with harsher punishments. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana said that once there is prima facie material against an accused based on reasoned evidence, authorities could consider freezing the person's assets. Digital arrest is a growing cybercrime in which fraudsters pose as police officers, court officials or personnel of government agencies and intimidate victims through audio and video calls. The victims are allegedly kept under virtual "custody" and pressured into transferring money.
"You may need to formally define 'digital arrests' in penal laws? It also has elements of extortion, robbery. Perhaps, you need to define this as a standalone offence with serious consequences, along with a provision that when something is found against an accused, his assets could be frozen," Chief Justice Kant suggested. Attorney General R Venkataramani told the court that digital arrest was already covered under existing laws and said an Inter-Departmental Committee was finalising a comprehensive report to identify gaps in the system. Justice Bagchi also raised concerns over deepfakes, saying emerging forms of online crime required legislative intervention. "We now have deepfakes. It can be used for cheating and impersonation. You fight with the given tooth, but you need to chisel it as well. Under Article 142, we cannot define a crime," he said.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the government was working on legislation dealing with digital arrests, deepfakes and other online offences. "There is a draft bill which is coming up. Possibly it will take care of digital arrests, deepfakes etc and other online crimes," Mehta said. Venkataramani informed the bench that the CBI was investigating around 20 major digital fraud cases involving losses of Rs 10 crore or more, while other cases were being investigated by state police. Seeking stronger safeguards, the Attorney General urged the court to direct the Reserve Bank of India to formally adopt and implement a standard operating procedure for banks to temporarily put debit restrictions on accounts suspected to be mule accounts used in cyber frauds. He also sought directions to states, Union Territories and law enforcement agencies to expedite the operationalisation of grievance redressal and money restoration mechanisms. The bench said it would issue directions in the matter on Wednesday.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.