New Delhi: The central government’s high-level committee on digital arrest scams has backed amending the Information Technology Act to let police officers below the rank of Inspector investigate specified cybercrime offences. The minutes, however, do not specify which offences would be covered.
The proposal has been recorded in the minutes of the inter-departmental committee’s 24 September meeting, chaired by the Special Secretary (Internal Security) in the Union Home Ministry. The minutes are annexed to the ministry’s fifth status report to the Supreme Court—seen by ThePrint—filed on 7 October in a suo motu case on digital arrest scams.
Section 78 of the IT Act bars any officer below Inspector rank from investigating offences under the law.
This proposal comes a year after the IT ministry—in October 2025—amended the IT Rules, so that only police officers of Deputy Inspector General rank or above could issue content takedown notices to platforms.
The 24 September minutes state that the “limited availability of officers of the required rank, particularly Inspectors in specialised cybercrime units, may create an operational bottleneck if the number of FIRs increases substantially”. The committee “considered the need of the suitable amendment”, under which officers “below the present prescribed rank may be empowered to investigate specified cybercrime offences”.
The committee has sought data from I4C, the Union home ministry and the Union IT ministry, so that it can examine “the feasibility of empowering suitably trained officers of lower rank, subject to appropriate safeguards and qualifications”. I4C is an initiative of the Ministry of Home Affairs linked to cybercrime that became an attached office of the ministry in July 2024.
Why the change
The trigger behind the proposal is the e-Zero FIR system, which automatically converts large cybercrime complaints into FIRs. According to the minutes of the panel’s meeting, it has raised the share of complaints registered as FIRs from one-two percent to about eight percent.
The offences covered under IT Act range from hacking and identity theft, to publishing or transmitting “obscene” material online under Section 67, a provision police have also invoked over social media posts. Parliament last changed the rank requirement in 2008, lowering it from Deputy Superintendent of Police to Inspector. Several High Courts have, over time, held that IT Act investigations by officers below Inspector rank do not meet the law’s requirement.
Immigration data & bank checks
The status report details several other measures being undertaken.
The Central Bureau of Investigation’s report, annexed to the filing, says the agency met the Bureau of Immigration “for using the immigration travel database to curb misuse of international roaming connections operated from scam compounds abroad”. It adds that the “technical feasibility of sharing said information was discussed”. CBI presents the talks as a follow-up to its national cyber-crime conference in February this year.
At a 22 July meeting with the Department of Financial Services, and banks’ chief vigilance and technology officers, CBI secured agreement on several steps.
Every bank account is to be linked to the holder’s Aadhaar-verified mobile number. Biometric OTP checks are to be extended to the opening of accounts in all banks. Mule-account databases are to be shared among banks in real time, and the Reserve Bank of India’s AI tool, MuleHunter.AI, is to be strengthened “with IP logs and geolocation data”.
Telecom checks
The Department of Telecommunications told the court in October that on 17 August, it directed telecom operators to block SIM cards issued beyond the legal limit.
Operators are to use a “table of mobile connections and images” made available to them on DoT’s Digital Intelligence Platform, and have until 30 November to comply. I4C also shares with DoT, every day, the mobile numbers reported by complainants on the national cybercrime portal. Operators are to deploy AI and machine-learning tools to “red flag suspect connections, to re-verify them in a time bound manner and to disconnect those which fail verification”.
The home ministry status report submitted in court also records a rise in grievances from account holders, whose bank accounts were frozen, or whose money was held during cybercrime investigations. They went from about 2,000 in May, to 93,041 by 30 September. In a May letter to state police chiefs, I4C said many grievances were being closed “with inadequate or unreasonable remarks”.
Another 983 petitions seeking to unfreeze accounts are pending in high courts. The petitioners include the stock-broking platform Groww, fintech firms such as RapiPay and Resilient Innovations—the company behind BharatPe—and small businesses and individuals.
The Supreme Court will hear the case next on 23 November.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)