The Supreme Court has expressed concern over cases of digital arrest. On Monday, the Supreme Court said that CBI will investigate cases related to digital arrest scam. The court said that in recent times the number of such cases has suddenly increased across the country, which is very worrying. CJI Surya Kant gave more powers to CBI under the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) to investigate the role of bankers whose bank accounts have been opened for the purpose of such digital arrest scams. The Supreme Court has also issued a notice to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and made it a party in this suo moto case.
The Supreme Court asked the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to help the court. It also asked when technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning would be implemented to identify such accounts and freeze the proceeds of crime. SC ordered that officials will provide full cooperation to CBI under the IT Intermediary Rules 2021.
States which have not yet given approval to CBI should allow investigation under the IT Act 2021 in their jurisdiction so that CBI can conduct operations on a large scale across the country. SC said CBI will seek help from Interpol officials if needed. The SC directed the Department of Telecommunications to submit a proposal regarding issuance of SIM cards or multiple SIM cards with the same name by telecom service providers. With this, all telecom service providers will be able to issue orders to prevent misuse of SIM cards.
The Supreme Court directed state governments to rapidly set up cybercrime centers and inform the SC about any blockage. Under IT rules, authorities should be directed to store mobile phone data of all phones recovered in FIRs for cyber crimes in different states. SC directed all states and UTs to hand over all FIRs registered under the IT Act 2021 to CBI.
The next hearing will take place after two weeks. CJI Surya Kant said that as soon as cognizance of the case was taken, many victims came forward and applied for trial. Following our earlier instructions, it has been learned that multiple FIRs have been registered in different states. How serious and widespread the crime is can be gauged from the fact that in most of the states, senior citizens have been targeted by fraudsters using different methods. Every case of being a victim of cyber crime, especially in the case of senior citizens, requires investigation. But, the digital arrest scam requires immediate attention of the country’s largest investigating agency. Therefore, we have given clear instructions to CBI to proceed further. Digital arrest is a new method of cyber crime in which fraudsters impersonate officers of investigating agencies like CBI and ED to extort money from people.