Sharing Google location can’t be rider for bail: Supreme Court

New Delhi, July 8

Courts can’t order an accused to share his Google pin location as a condition for grant of bail to enable the police to constantly track his movements and virtually peep into his privacy, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday.

“Imposing any bail condition that enables the police or investigation agency to track every movement of the accused released on bail by using any technology or otherwise would undoubtedly violate the right to privacy guaranteed under Article 21 (right to life and liberty)… This cannot be a condition of bail,” a Bench led by Justice AS Oka said.

Noting that the object of the bail condition could not be to keep a constant vigil on the movements of the accused, the Bench said, “The investigating agency cannot be permitted to continuously peep into the private life of the accused enlarged on bail, by imposing arbitrary conditions since that will violate the right of privacy of the accused, as guaranteed by Article 21… keeping such constant vigil on the accused by imposing drastic bail conditions will amount to keeping the accused in some kind of confinement even after he is released on bail.”