Sahil asked me this question after his colleague received a WhatsApp video call from a man in a police uniform who announced he was under digital arrest.<\/p>\n
The question Sahil asked me was simple: is any of that legally possible?<\/p>\n
I told him no. With complete certainty. No.<\/p>\n
Here is what Indian law actually says. An arrest is a physical act. A police officer must be present in person. They must show you their official identity card. They must give you a written arrest memo. They must inform you of the grounds of your arrest. They must allow you to inform a family member or lawyer. All of this happens in person.<\/p>\n
No law in India not the CrPC, not the IT Act, not any amendment, not any special provision gives any government agency the authority to place a person under any form of legal restriction through a phone screen. The term digital arrest does not exist anywhere in Indian legislation.<\/p>\n
The CBI does not conduct investigations through WhatsApp. TRAI does not arrest people. Narcotics Control Bureau officers do not video call suspects from WhatsApp numbers. Customs officials do not demand bank transfers to hold government accounts.<\/p>\n
Every single element of the digital arrest call is theatre. A costume bought online, a background from a photo, a fake warrant built in a design app, and a phone number that shows any name the caller wants.<\/p>\n
The moment anyone on a call uses the words digital arrest, you are talking to a criminal. Hang up. Walk to the next room. Tell someone.<\/p>\n
Install CYBX. Built by 63SATS, CYBX blocks fraud caller numbers linked to digital arrest networks before your phone even rings.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sahil asked me this question after his colleague received a WhatsApp video call from a man in a police uniform…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybx.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybx.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybx.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybx.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybx.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cybx.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5024,"href":"https:\/\/cybx.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5017\/revisions\/5024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybx.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybx.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybx.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}