New law empowers authorities, not citizens

The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill, 2022, was typically bulldozed through Parliament last month. It replaces the Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920. It was repeatedly emphasised by the Central Government that, apart from the incorporation of latest technology, the law empowered the police to prevent crimes and secure convictions. The government seemed to argue that more identification data about a larger number of arrestees would yield far-reaching success in crime policing. The irony, as the critics noted, is that the intent of the Bill appeared less about the criminal justice system (CJS) agencies benefiting from the technology-driven data collection and more about strengthening the politically misused police authority. From the perspective of the victim, it actually offered no verifiable strategy for crime prevention, and no researched road map linked to such data for better conviction rate in Indian conditions was cited.

Whatever be the avowed direction of the CJS in the country, two stains are prominently visible in the practising culture across the political and policing spectrum: planting and manipulating of evidence by the police agencies with impunity and gross misuse of their coercive authority by the political masters. The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill, which received the President’s assent on April 18 and became an Act, deepens the fault lines. Arguing in support of the law, the Centre cited a fallacy of sorts that the availability of enormous data on stolen vehicles had helped in tracing them, without bothering to establish that vehicle thefts have dropped considerably or the conviction rate in this category has shot up dramatically.

Conviction in a criminal case depends on matching the suspect’s samples with evidence found at the crime scene, for which the existing procedures are adequate. Moreover, the outcome of a criminal trial has no link with the size of the stored identification data, to be inflated generally on a routine basis. Would such data not at least be of some help in identifying the possible suspects in the manner of a trial-and-error method? Yes, once in a while someone might hit the jackpot but at an enormous social and financial cost. In any case, only the data on hardened criminals to be sought by the investigators need to be stored in police computers for any meaningful elimination of suspects. The technology-driven identification data at a more universal scale is already available in Aadhaar, passport etc., computers which can be accessed on a case-to-case basis. These non-police data sources will any day be considered more transparent and less manipulative by the stakeholders.

The text of the amended Act itself is a giveaway. As Samajwadi Party MP Ram Gopal Yadav pointed out during the debate in Parliament, it did not differentiate between a hardened criminal and an ordinary arrestee. Amit Shah’s counter gesture that the political arrestees would be kept out of the jurisdiction of the Act when rules are framed, is too lame. The Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code are universally applied in India, including the political arrestees, and no such thing as the ‘Indian Political Code’ or ‘Political Procedure Code’ could be envisaged in view of the constitutional provisions zealously guarding the doctrine of equality before law. In any case, the discretion to segregate the ‘political’ from the ‘criminal’ would initially rest with the investigation agencies and remain obviously open to political manipulation.

The Act authorises the taking of measurements of not just convicts but even ‘other persons’ for the purpose of identification and investigation in criminal matters. What could be more sweeping than this? Any refusal or resistance will be a substantive offence and the “Magistrate”, whose satisfaction would be crucial for authorising the measurements, means, in relation to ordering someone to give security for his good behaviour or maintaining peace, the Executive Magistrate. A person not on good terms with his neighbour or someone intending to participate in a protest agitation would be liable for sampling under the Act in the same way as the one convicted of rape or murder.

Under Section 4 of the Act, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a subordinate organisation to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), shall, in the interest of prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of any offence under any law for the time being in force, collect the records of measurements from the state government or the Union Territory administration or other law-enforcement agencies, and store, preserve, destroy, process, share and disseminate the same at its discretion. Nothing has been left to the imagination to visualise the draconian trap that the Act has set up for immense manipulation.

Why does this particular law harm the interest of an individual much more than just the oft-quoted apprehension about intrusion into a citizen’s privacy? A short answer is, because it is being brought in a much more dreaded environment of political vendetta than ever before. The frequent registration of cross-state criminal cases to silence political dissent and the rampant use of bulldozers to make a polarising political statement are the signs of an unprecedented malady. Generally speaking, all retributive laws that claim to be ultra-stringent on their targeted law-breaking segments seldom facilitate the victims correspondingly. As a rule, they end up further empowering the authorities and not the citizen.

Addressing the annual All India Police Science Congress at Bhopal within days, Home Minister Amit Shah showcased the amended Act, “Data is the new science and big data is the solution to all problems.” However, its implementation through coercive agencies will be akin to trusting the dynamism of our democracy with the period-rooted ‘heroics’ of Hiroo Onoda. Onoda, an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer in World War II, was a holdout who did not surrender at the war’s end in August 1945. He continued to fight the ‘war’ for another 29 years hiding in the Philippines, unmindful of the changing world, until his former commander arrived to formally relieve him from ‘duty’ in 1974.