The Supreme Court has requested the Center’s response to a petition filed under the Criminal Procedure Act

*Paromita Das

The Delhi High Court sought the Center’s response on Thursday to a petition alleging that provisions of the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act that allow police to “forcibly take measurements” of convicts, those arrested, and others are unconstitutional and illegal.

A bench of acting chief justice Vipin Sanghi and justice Navin Chawla issued a notice on the plea, saying the public interest litigation (PIL) filed by lawyer Harshit Goel alleging that the law aids profiling and the creation of a surveillance state “requires consideration.”
Senior advocate Amit Mahajan, representing the Union government, argued that the petition was not maintainable, arguing that the validity of a law cannot be challenged in a PIL in a vacuum.

In response, the court requested that the Center file its response to the challenge, including the issue of maintainability.

The petitioner claims that sections 2(1)(a)(iii), 2(1)(b), 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 of the Act grant authorities “unguided discretionary powers” and are arbitrary, excessive, unreasonable, disproportionate, devoid of substantive due process, and in violation of fundamental rights of Indian citizens as well as the basic structure of the Constitution.
In his April 19 plea, the petitioner stated that under the Act, police can “forcibly take measurements” – including iris and retina scans, biological samples, and behavioural attributes – of convicts, arrestees, detainees, undertrials, and anyone else who may be remotely involved in an offense, without establishing their involvement or the evidentiary value of such “measurements.”

The petition stated that, whereas the previous law established a statutory framework for lawfully collecting finger and footprint impressions and photographs of only a specific group of people, the current Act places all people in the same category.
“A reading of Section 3 (taking of measurements) with Section 4 of the current Act reveals such an intention (databasing of measurements). Together, these provisions make it clear that the intent is to create a database of “measurements” profiling the class of people identified in Section 3 for the purpose of assisting investigations of future crimes “According to the petition.

The case would be heard again on November 15th.