Digital Arrest In India: Legal Framework, Judicial Response, And Proposals For Regulatory Reform
- IJLLR Journal
- Jun 11
- 2 min read
Manan Jhamb, UILS, Chandigarh University, Mohali
Sanya Mutneja, UILS, Chandigarh University, Mohali
ABSTRACT
Digital Arrest An emerging type of cyber-enabled coercive criminality where wouldn't players pose as law enforcement agents, judges, or regulators via video conferencing software (WhatsApp, Skype, or Zoom) to simulate a virtual arrest, take money off victims by threat of so-called criminal charges, and then laundering the money through layered financial services. Though the reported cases have exponentially increased, reaching 39,925 cases in 2022 and 1,23,672 cases in 2024, and the financial losses have been on the increase to reach ₹91.14 crore to 1,935.51 crore in the past two years, Indian law does not include a statutory definition of what is considered as a digital arrest, no specific criminal offence provision, and no centralized institutionalized mechanism used to investigate and prosecute such offence.
The paper is a systematic study of the doctrines applicable to digital arrest in current laws on the subject of digital arrest of Section 204, 205, 308, 318, 319, 336-340 and 111 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023; These provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000, Section 66C, 66D and 69; and the evidentiary provisions of Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023. It follows the developing judicial pronouncements, such as the Suo Motu action of the Supreme Court, addressed in In Re: Victims of Digital Arrest Related to Forged Documents (2025), and the judgment of the Delhi High Court, which was issued in Ashok Kumar v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2026), that have started to formulate a conceptualization of digital arrest as a type of organized, cyber-enabled fraud as opposed to outright cheating.
Based on comparative examples, the paper reveals three gaps in the Indian regulatory approach: the lack of a visible offence of digital confinement; the lack of effective co-ordination of enforcement by multiple agencies; and the lack of platform-level responsibility carried by duty-of-care. The paper involves concludes with concrete legislative, institutional, and technical reform suggestions, such as BNS amendments, passing of an Online Safety and Anti-Fraud Act, requirement of caller-ID authentication, and creation of a National Digital Fraud Authority, tuned to the special harms of digital arrest without violating constitutional protections of privacy and due process.
Keywords: Digital Arrest, Cybercrime, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Information Technology Act, Impersonation Fraud, Virtual Detention, Organized Cybercrime, Regulatory Reform, Online Safety, Deepfakes.
