2 weeks ago
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The Supreme Court connected Tuesday (May 19, 2026) asked the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to see a PIL arsenic a practice seeking a robust mechanics to retrieve oregon destruct the idiosyncratic information of Indians allegedly stolen and stored connected overseas servers.
A Bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M. Pancholi was proceeding a PIL filed by Nitish Kumar, a cyber information consultant.
While refusing to entertain the PIL connected grounds that it pertained to accusation exertion and hardly thing to bash with ineligible aspects, the CJI asked the petitioner to attack the authorities with his grievances.
The plea sought the court's involution to operationalise the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, and to mitigate the emergence of "digital arrests" and extortion linked to information breaches.
While acknowledging the gravity of the concerns raised, the CJI-led seat observed that the issues were "highly technical" and required administrative and technological expertise alternatively than judicial involution astatine this stage.
"The contented being highly method successful nature, it seems to america that an effectual people volition beryllium to attack the Ministry of Electronics and IT. Let this plea beryllium fixed arsenic a supplementary representation. They shall see it," the Bench said.
Mr. Kumar, who argued the case, submitted that the information stolen by entities successful astatine slightest 5 overseas countries is being weaponised against Indians.
He highlighted that delicate information, including fingerprints and idiosyncratic identifiers, is being utilized to facilitate transnational crimes similar integer arrests.
The Bench said "Unless there’s an extradition treaty” the accused cannot beryllium brought present to look the law. "If we cannot bring the information back, we tin astatine slightest restructure and prevention it," the petitioner said.
The plea sought a absorption to the Centre to retrieve oregon destruct stolen idiosyncratic information from overseas jurisdictions.
It besides sought contiguous operationalisation of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and constitution of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to show information theft investigation.
Disposing the plea, the seat granted the petitioner liberty to taxable the petition arsenic a supplementary practice to MeitY.
"The petitioner is said to person brought the substance to the announcement of the Union done representations arsenic to however a broad mechanics tin beryllium operationalised for the aboriginal extortion of information and for demolition of specified information which has been stolen to forestall misuse," it said.
