Within minutes of an arrest anywhere in India today, a face — handcuffed, flanked by policemen, sometimes garlanded with placards cataloguing the crime — starts circulating on social media, often before the accused is produced before a magistrate. A Supreme Court of India PIL seeking a nationwide media protocol/police media briefings has forced a question that Indian policing has quietly avoided: under what law do we do this, should we do it, and where should it stop?

Photographs of wanted persons and reward notices have solved crimes, helped recover missing children, and brought fugitives to book years after trails went cold — the public, alerted, has done what a thinly stretched police force alone could not.

The justification is strong; the legal architecture is weak. What is needed is a clear legal basis, not a habit inherited from mere precedent.

Current law and practice

No single statute permits or prohibits police from publishing photographs of accused persons. What exists is a patchwork of colonial-era regulations, an identification statute and the general architecture of criminal procedure.

Section 84 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023 (Section 82 of the Code of Criminal Procedure or CrPC) allows courts to proclaim absconders and publish proclamations in newspapers. It says nothing about photographs, but attaching one has become settled practice because it serves the purpose of securing the person’s appearance. This judicial process is triggered only after a warrant fails; it does not, however, provide a basis for publicity at the investigation stage.

Publication at the investigation stage rests instead on the general powers of an investigating officer (Io): every person must assist the police in preventing and investigating offences, and an Io may examine anyone with relevant information. Publishing photographs on social media to solicit identification, trace absconders or find witnesses is a digital-age extension of the old “Hue and Cry Notice”, in State Police Manuals — provisions that predate Independence and whose language (“description of the subject”) is broad enough to plausibly cover photographs and rewards.

Reward announcements stand on firmer, narrower ground, typically governed by State Police Regulations under the Police Act, 1861, which vest sanctioning authority in a hierarchy ranging from the Station House Officer (SHO) to the State government. No prior warrant or proclamation is required; it is an exercise of administrative discretion, not a judicial precondition. The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022, governs the taking, storage and use of measurements — including photographs — for identification, but is often wrongly cited as enabling their publication. It says nothing, however, about circulating them.

Constitutional limits

Article 21, jurisprudence has sharpened, not softened. Presumption of innocence remains central to criminal justice, and courts increasingly recognise that broadcasting an arrested person’s face as a fait accompli of guilt, before any charge is framed can cause real, irreversible harm. The Rajasthan High Court termed such practices “institutional humiliation” digital circulation is permanent, searchable and indifferent to later acquittal.

The Bureau of Police Research and Development prepared a draft manual on media briefings by police personnel and shared it with the Ministry of Home Affairs in July 2024. In January 2026, the Supreme Court said the amicus had prepared a Police Manual for Media Briefing and directed the States to evolve appropriate policies based on it within three months. Some categories are already absolute red lines: a juvenile in conflict with the law cannot be identified except in the child’s best interest and with the Juvenile Justice Board’s permission; a sexual assault survivor’s identity is protected by law. The intriguing debate concerns the ordinary adult — accused, arrested, but not yet tried.

The distinction that matters

Publication sits on a scale: at one end, legitimate investigative necessity — crime prevention, public order and law-and-order purposes; at the other, the showcasing of police achievements. . Photographs released merely to showcase arrests serve police optics at the accused’s expense and can prejudice public opinion before trial.

American law treats “wanted” notices as public-record exceptions to privacy law, but agencies are trained to frame them carefully — “alleged,” “wanted for questioning” — to preserve the presumption of innocence even while seeking help. British policing, more conservatively, withholds arrested persons’ identities altogether.

What is needed is not an outright ban on soliciting public assistance — that would be legally unwarranted and self-defeating — but a codified, uniform national protocol that distinguishes proportionate, need-based disclosure from prejudicial publicity; mandates blackout categories such as juveniles and sexual-offence complainants; requires time-bound review and takedown once the investigative purpose is served or an accused is discharged or acquitted; and applies uniformly across States.

One question before any photograph goes out could be a beginning: is the disclosure necessary to the investigation, or merely convenient to the narrative?

Rupin Sharma is an IPS officer who is the Director General of Police, Nagaland