Balancing investigative utility and dignity of the accused: how should police decide when to publish photographs?

Indian law lets police collect an accused person's image but nowhere says they may release it. With arrest photographs circulating on social media before production before a magistrate, the decision rests on a single test: does the investigation actually require publication?

When publicity genuinely serves investigation

• The law already accepts publicity in one narrow situation: under BNSS, 2023 s.84 (earlier CrPC s.82), a court may publish a written proclamation against a person who has absconded so a warrant cannot be executed, and declare him a proclaimed offender in grave cases [1].
• Crucially, this power is court-ordered and locative — used to reach someone who cannot be found.
• Public alerts extend a thinly stretched force, helping trace fugitives and recover missing persons when trails go cold.

Where publication injures dignity without investigative gain

• A handcuffed, already-arrested person is not missing; his photograph cannot help locate him, so necessity fails.
• Acquittal is not a rare accident: NCRB data show roughly as many persons acquitted (about 11.84 lakh) as convicted (about 11.37 lakh) [2]. Pre-trial shaming therefore lands routinely on the innocent.
• The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022 obliges destruction of records of persons acquitted after all appeals or released without trial [3] — yet a photograph already forwarded to the press cannot be recalled. The quieter act (storing a fingerprint) is regulated; the more public one is not.

A workable decision framework

• Necessity first: publish only where the person is unlocated or where other victims may need to come forward.
• Recorded reasons: the officer should note in writing, before release, what the investigation gains — the safeguard the Law Commission urged in 1980 and which the 2022 Act still omits [3].
• Binding rules, not advice: the MHA's Advisory on Media Policy of Police (1 April 2010) is non-binding since police is a State subject [4]; rules framed under the 2022 Act, plus State standing orders, would give it teeth.

Publicity is a legitimate investigative tool, not a punishment to be administered at the police station. Anchoring release in written necessity — and court authority where a person is absconding — protects both effective policing and the Article 21 dignity of a person still presumed innocent.