Policing the line between publicity and justice

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.