Fear, Fraud and the Fiction of “Digital Arrest”: Does India’s Criminal Law Need a Rethink?

Author- Jiya Dadhich, Student, National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi

Imagine you are sitting at your home and you suddenly receive a video call where the other person is dressed as a police officer or any government official and also claims to be one. He tells you that “Your Aadhaar has been linked to money laundering” or “An arrest warrant has been issued against you”. The caller then tells you to not disconnect the call, not to tell your family or friends about this and that you are under digital surveillance and ultimately under digital arrest. For the next several hours or even days, the scammer keeps you, the victim on a video call, preventing you from contacting anyone else. They create panic and convince you that you must transfer money to a “safe government account” for verification. You, believing the threat is real, transfer lakhs of rupees.

And the moment you transfer the money and verify what actually happened with you, you are told that there was never any arrest, and the callers were fraudsters.

This is what Digital Arrest is. Scammers impersonate police officers, intimidate victims with fabricated legal proceedings, and induce them to transfer money. Digital arrest scams are not merely financial frauds; they exploit the public’s limited understanding of legal procedures and deep-seated fear of state authority. Such scams succeed because people trust police uniforms, government logos, legal terminology and fear of criminal prosecution. The scammers weaponize that trust.

Although, there is no concept of “digital arrest” under Indian law. The procedural safeguards governing lawful arrests, as laid down by the Supreme Court in D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal, underscore that arrests must follow due process and statutory safeguards, making the very idea of a “digital arrest” legally untenable. Genuine law enforcement officers will never arrest you digitally, demand fines over video calls, or keep you under surveillance via Skype or WhatsApp. Any such attempt and claim of a “digital arrest warrant” is a fraudulent extortion tactic.

However, existing criminal and cyber laws do cover the fraudulent acts which lead to the scam. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023; Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 and Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860 which is applicable in older cases already contain provisions related to impersonation, cheating, identity theft, forgery, criminal intimidation and cyber enabled financial fraud.

When fraudsters impersonate police officers or government officials, intimidate victims with fraudulent legal proceedings, and induce them to transfer money, their conduct may already fall within established offences.

Furthermore, to strengthen the mechanism to deal with cybercrimes including digital arrest scams, the Central Government has taken significant steps, amongst which comes the ‘Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre’ (I4C) setup by the Ministry of Home Affairs to deal with all types of cybercrimes in the country.

Now, the query might arise that while such laws already exist, why is there a sudden surge in these scams after 2024 and they continue to rise. At first glance, the legal framework appears adequate. Indian criminal law already criminalizes cheating, personation, criminal intimidation, identity theft, forgery, and cyber enabled financial fraud. If these provisions are capable of prosecuting digital arrest scams, the growing prevalence of such crimes raises a more fundamental question:

why do these scams continue to succeed?

The answer lies less in legislative inadequacy and more in the practical challenges of enforcement and public perception. Scammers rarely convince victims through sophisticated legal arguments, rather, they exploit fear. Even educated individuals panic when they hear terms like arrest warrant, money laundering, CBI inquiry and digital surveillance. The law is not failing because it is absent. Instead, it is failing because criminals have become better at exploiting human psychology, technological tools, and institutional limitations than society has become at preventing them.

The nationwide searches conducted by the CBI under Operation Chakra-VI across more than 80 locations in 16 states highlight that digital arrest scams are no longer sporadic acts of individual fraud but are driven by organized criminal networks. Their success depends on access to mule bank accounts, fraudulent SIM cards, and digital communication channels. Consequently, India’s response should prioritize disrupting this infrastructure through enhanced cooperation between law enforcement agencies, banks, and telecom service providers instead of relying exclusively on legislative expansion.

Digital arrest scams demonstrate that the real challenge lies not in the absence of criminal laws but in their effective implementation. Ultimately, the rise of digital arrest scams reminds us that the effectiveness of criminal law depends not only on the existence of legal provisions but also on public’s understanding of them. As cybercriminals continue to exploit fear and misinformation, India’s response must focus on strengthening enforcement, improving legal literacy, and enhancing institutional coordination. Until then, the greatest vulnerability will remain not a gap in legislation, but the gap between the law as it exists and the law as it is understood by the ordinary citizens.

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