The Supreme Court on Tues- day suggested that the Union government formally define “digital arrest” in criminal law as a standalone offence and provide for stricter punish- ment, including freezing the assets of suspects once a prima facie case is established on the basis of reasoned evidence.
A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V Mohan was hearing a suo motu case on strengthening measures against digital arrest scams and other online frauds, Bar & Bench reports. Direc- tions to be issued on Wednes- day. “Do you have to define for- mally the case of digital arrest in penal laws? It has elements of extortion, robbery. Do you need to define this as a standa- lone offence with serious con- sequences, along with a provision that when something is found against an accused… his assets will be frozen,” CJI Kant suggested.
Justice Bagchi also high- lighted the growing threat posed by deepfakes and stressed the need for legislative intervention. “We have deepfakes now. 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 informed the Court, “There is a draft bill which is coming up… It will take care of digital arrests, deepfakes etc,” Mehta said.
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Attorney General R Venkata- ramani told the Court that an Inter-Departmental Commit- tee was finalising a compre- hensive report to identify gaps in the existing system.
He also informed the Court that the Central Bureau of In- vestigation (CBI) is investigat- ing around 20 major digital fraud cases involving losses of 10 crore and above, while the remaining cases are being handled by the respective state police authorities.
The suo motu proceedings were initiated in October 2025 after a senior citizen couple wrote to the Supreme Court al- leging they had been cheated of 1.5 crore between Sept 1 and 16 by fraudsters posing as offi- cials of the CBI, Intelligence Bureau and the judiciary.
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