The death by suicide of Bengaluru-based billionaire real estate developer CJ Roy, while an Income Tax “search and seizure” operation was underway at his office, should prompt an uncomfortable national conversation. Reports suggest the department had been searching premises linked to the Confident Group for three days, and that he was questioned on the afternoon he took his own life with his licensed firearm.
Whatever the eventual findings about his tax affairs, the circumstances raise a deeper constitutional and ethical question: how far can a coercive tax search go before it begins to arguably offend the right to life and privacy under Article 21?
Power is necessary—but only with enforceable limits
In cases of blatant and repeated tax evasion, intrusive measures will remain necessary. But the search-and-seizure power under Section 132 of the Income Tax Act is structurally imbalanced. These are, in substance, warrants issued and executed within the department — on the “reason to believe” of senior Income Tax officers — without prior judicial scrutiny. The officials enter homes and offices, examine private papers, and can remain on the premises for extended periods. Such power is constitutionally tolerable only if fenced by strict, clear, and enforceable limits. The law offers far less certainty than citizens assume.
The myth of the “48-hour raid”
A belief persists that raids must end within 48 hours. It is repeated confidently in seminars and media debates. Yet there is no such limit in the Act, the rules, departmental circulars, or binding judicial precedent. Nor do internal instructions prescribe a hard outer cap on how long officers may occupy a residence or workplace during a search. At best, there are broad administrative expectations about completing post-search work — useful for departmental timelines, not a safeguard a citizen can invoke when premises are effectively under occupation.
When a search becomes an occupation
In practice, many searches spill across several days. Where immediate seizure is difficult, officers may pass “prohibitory orders”, sealing rooms, cupboards, lockers, or digital devices, and freezing access for weeks unless lifted earlier. Seized books and documents can also be retained for long periods, subject largely to departmental approvals. The combined effect can be stark: a home or office converted into an occupied zone, parts of it sealed, and papers and data held in official custody well beyond the search team’s physical presence. Even where technically lawful, an open-ended regime invites overreach and amplifies pressure, especially when conducted in full view of staff, neighbours, or business associates.
The digital turn: deeper intrusion, greater need for discipline
Modern enforcement adds another layer of intrusion. Searches now commonly involve access to passwords, encrypted devices, email, and cloud-based accounts. There are genuine investigative reasons for these powers in a world where records can be wiped or shifted across borders in minutes. But that is precisely why safeguards must be stronger. When the state can reach into the entirety of a person’s digital life, the absence of an outer time limit becomes more, not less, troubling. Procedure must tighten as power deepens.
Collateral damage to families and firms
The human costs extend beyond the individual assessee. When residential premises are covered, family members, including women and children, effectively find themselves under watch. Routines are disrupted; privacy becomes conditional; normal life is suspended. For businesses, the fallout can be commercially crippling: working capital, essential devices, or operational records may be seized or sealed, bringing enterprises to a standstill in the name of investigation. Even after the search party leaves, a sealed room or frozen system can keep a firm half-paralysed, while suppliers and lenders infer distress. A power meant to locate evidence can end up magnifying reputational and economic harm.
The constitutional pivot after Puttaswamy
After the Supreme Court’s judgments, privacy is not merely an administrative question. Privacy is recognised as intrinsic to life and personal liberty under Article 21, and state intrusion must satisfy legality, a legitimate aim, proportionality, and the least restrictive means. In plain terms: the state may intrude, but only under a regime that is narrowly tailored and safeguarded against excess, with procedures that are fair, just, and reasonable rather than vague, discretionary, or open-ended.
The missing safeguard: a hard stop
Here lies the core lacuna — and, therefore, the clearest scope for reform. The law prescribes time limits for certain downstream steps — retention permissions, the validity of specific orders, and post-search assessments. Yet it is strikingly silent on the one element that most directly shapes lived experience: how long the state may physically occupy private premises and, in effect, suspend normal life. Citizens are left with the impression that a search ends when the department is done, not when the law requires it to stop. Internal timelines and administrative expectations are no substitute for a statutory rule that sets clear, enforceable boundaries.
That silence also clashes with proportionality. If freezing premises, seizing documents, accessing passwords, and questioning assessees are justified to prevent evasion, the state must show it has calibrated these powers with safeguards — including temporal limits — so the cure does not become worse than the disease.
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Deterrence without dehumanisation
None of this argues for indulgence toward tax evaders. The department must retain the capacity to act swiftly where evidence is likely to be destroyed or concealed, and the deterrent effect of a well-targeted, lawful search is real. Nor can early reports about any particular case — including that of CJ Roy — be treated as a final verdict on either the taxpayer or the officers involved. Investigations and legal processes must run their course, including any allegations of abetment to suicide.
But deterrence cannot mean institutional licence for an endlessly extensible raid. A search that extends across days, followed by seals and freezes that linger for weeks, begins to resemble a siege. It invites error as well as overreach, and it corrodes the credibility of tax enforcement itself. It also jars with the rhetoric of “ease of doing business”. For entrepreneurs — especially in cash-intensive or semi-formal sectors — the fear of an open-ended search becomes a chilling factor, discouraging expansion, risk-taking, and even formalisation.
A modest reform with a large constitutional payoff
The suicide of a high-profile businessman during an active search is, one hopes, an outlier. It should nonetheless be treated as a constitutional alarm bell. The question is not whether the taxman should have a sword, but whether the law should insist on a sheath.
The most constitutionally meaningful reform is also the simplest: write into law clear the reasonable limits on how long search teams may occupy premises, with narrowly drafted exceptions for genuinely extraordinary cases, subject to written reasons and higher-level approval. Such a framework would not protect evasion; it would protect the constitutional order. It would also incentivise better preparation and sharper targeting, reducing reliance on prolonged presence as a method of pressure.
The bottom line
If privacy is truly part of the right to life and personal liberty, the question is no longer whether we can afford temporal limits on tax searches. It is whether we can constitutionally afford to be without them.
KBS Sidhu is a former IAS officer who retired as Special Chief Secretary, Punjab. He tweets @kbssidhu1961. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)