"Supreme Court Weighs National Protocol on Police Publicising Accused"
Presumption of innocence
legal principle that an accused is treated as innocent until proven guilty by a court.
Judicial custody
accused is lodged in jail under a magistrate's order, not in a police lock-up.
The Indian Constitution protects an accused person's liberty and dignity through Article 21, which the Supreme Court has read to include a right to privacy in K.S. Puttaswamy v Union of India (2017). Presumption of innocence, though not written into the text, flows from this guarantee: a person accused of a crime remains innocent until a court holds otherwise, and criminal procedure is built around safeguards that prevent premature punishment. The stage at which police may question an accused itself follows a defined sequence. After arrest, a person may first be held in police custody for questioning, and once produced before a magistrate, can be sent either back to police custody, within statutory limits, or to judicial custody. In judicial custody, the accused is lodged in jail under the magistrate's order, and the investigating officer cannot interrogate further without the court's specific permission. This distinction matters here because photographs are usually taken and circulated at the moment of arrest, in the window before this judicial oversight even begins, when investigating officers exercise wide and largely unregulated discretion.
Beyond this custody framework, no single law in India directly governs whether police may publish an accused person's photograph. What exists is a patchwork inherited mostly from colonial-era policing: the general power of investigating officers to seek public assistance, provisions in State Police Manuals descending from pre-Independence "Hue and Cry" notices, and State Police Regulations framed under the Police Act, 1861 that let authorities from the Station House Officer up to the State government sanction rewards. Courts also use Section 84 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (Section 82 of the CrPC) to proclaim absconders in newspapers once a warrant fails, and attaching a photograph to such a proclamation has become settled practice, even though the provision itself never mentions photographs.
The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022 adds another layer but is often misread. It regulates how police may take, store and use bodily measurements, including photographs, strictly for identification purposes; it says nothing about circulating these images publicly or on social media. This gap matters because publicity at the investigation stage, before any charge is even framed, rests on no clear statutory authorisation at all. It is instead justified purely by outcome: photographs and reward notices have helped recover missing children, trace fugitives, and solve cold cases through public assistance. …
With reference to India, consider the following statements:
1.Judicial custody means an accused is in the custody of the concerned magistrate and such accused is locked up in a police station lock-up, not in jail.
2.During judicial custody, the police officer in charge of the case, without the approval of the court, cannot interrogate the suspect.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Consider the following statements regarding the legal basis for police publishing photographs of accused persons in India:
1.Section 84 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 explicitly authorises police to publish photographs of accused persons on social media.
2.The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022 authorises publication of photographs and measurements of accused persons to the public.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Match List I (Legal Instrument) with List II (Function) and select the correct answer using the code given below:
List I
A.Police Act, 1861
B.Section 84, BNSS 2023 (Section 82, CrPC)
C.Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022
D.Juvenile Justice Act
List II
1.Sanctioning of reward notices for arrest
2.Proclamation of absconders in newspapers
3.Collection and storage of identification measurements
4.Protection of identity of a child in conflict with law
Consider the following statements:
1.In police custody, the investigating officer may interrogate the accused without prior approval of the magistrate, subject to prescribed limits.
2.In judicial custody, the investigating officer needs the court's permission to interrogate the accused.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
With reference to the presumption of innocence in Indian criminal jurisprudence, consider the following statements:
1.It is explicitly listed as a Fundamental Right in Part III of the Constitution.
2.Courts have read it into the guarantee of personal liberty and dignity under Article 21.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
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