Examine the challenges posed by multi-state cybercrime-linked FIRs to India's federal criminal justice administration.

Cyber-linked offences leave a footprint in every State where content is uploaded, shared or viewed, so one act can generate several FIRs. The Supreme Court's notice to the Centre, Maharashtra and Haryana on a comedian's plea to club FIRs arising from the "₹370 biryani" remark [1] illustrates how India's State-based police structure struggles with borderless offences.

Why multiplicity arises

• Police is a State subject (Entry 2, State List); each State claims territorial jurisdiction once content circulates there. In the above case the show was held in Gurugram, yet the Maharashtra Cyber Police registered its own FIR over the clip's online spread [1].
• Statutory silence: the BNSS, 2023 recast police custody, forensics and digital records, but created no mechanism to merge FIRs on a single incident across States [2].

Challenges for criminal justice administration

• Duplication of scarce capacity: parallel investigations examine identical facts and the same accused, yielding no new evidence.
• Liberty cost: the BNSS curtails mandatory bail for those with proceedings pending in more than one case, and permits 15 days' police custody spread across a 40–60 day window [2]. Every additional FIR therefore weakens the accused's bail position — "process as punishment".
• Unequal access to remedy: clubbing is available only through the constitutional courts under Article 32 [1], which favours litigants able to reach Delhi.
• Coordination deficit: the MHA had to create Joint Cyber Coordination Teams for hotspots with multi-jurisdictional issues and the Samanvaya platform for inter-State linkage of cybercrime cases [3], acknowledging that routine State-to-State coordination is weak.
• Forum shopping, as complainants select the most convenient jurisdiction.

Way forward

• Insert a "one incident, one investigation" provision in the BNSS, with a mandatory check of existing FIRs before fresh registration.
• The Supreme Court should lay down binding criteria for clubbing, enabling High Courts to grant relief locally.
• Strengthen I4C, State Cyber Coordination Centres and Samanvaya to designate a lead investigating agency [3].

A cooperative-federal model — State autonomy in policing combined with a single, fair investigation — best reconciles effective cybercrime enforcement with the Article 21 guarantee of personal liberty.