SC’s Suo Motu Cognisance on ‘Digital Arrest’ Scams Welcomed by Experts as a Crucial Step

The Supreme Court’s decision to take suo motu cognizance of the growing menace of ‘digital arrest’ cases has drawn strong support from legal and cyber experts. 

Experts have termed it a critical and much-needed intervention to tackle a new wave of AI-driven cyber frauds. The top court called the trend a ‘direct assault on judicial dignity’ and issued notices to all states and Union Territories, seeking details of such cases, and is considering transferring the investigations to the CBI for a unified national probe.

Cyber law expert Pavan Duggal, in an exclusive conversation with iTV Network, said the phenomenon marks a dangerous evolution in cybercrime.

Duggal said: ‘Fraudsters misuse artificial intelligence to impersonate law enforcement officers and coerce victims, often through video calls, into believing they are under arrest.’

He said: ‘This is a new and frightening dimension of cyber fraud.’

Duggal said that the scale of such scams has now reached a point where legal and systemic intervention has become unavoidable. He praised the Supreme Court’s suo motu action as ‘timely and progressive.’ Duggal also said that existing laws like the IPC and IT Act do not fully cover these AI-induced crimes.

Need was for dedicated legal provisions to deal with emerging cyber threats, clearer accountability for service providers, and stronger safeguards within the banking system to prevent fraudulent money transfers, Duggal said.

Senior Advocate Vikas Pahwa also hailed the move, calling it a ‘vital response to an expanding national threat.’

Pahwa noted that elderly citizens are often the prime targets because they are less familiar with technology and easily misled by scammers posing as CBI, ED, or Income Tax officers. 

Pahwa also welcomed the government’s cooperation and its proposal for a CBI-led investigation with support from the Home Ministry’s cyber unit. Pahwa said it would help create a uniform, nationwide framework to track and prevent such crimes. Pahwa said: ‘Need a uniform investigation at a pan-India level by an agency like CBI which should deploy the cyber law experts.’