Navigating Justice in the Age of Digital Arrest: Legal Remedies and Institutional Responses to Cyber-Fraud Victimization in India

Abstract

‘Digital arrest’ is not a legally recognised mode of custody but a coercive cyber-fraud script in which offenders impersonate police, investigative agencies, regulators or courts, simulate criminal process and compel victims to transfer money while remaining under audio-visual surveillance. This article argues that the phenomenon should be understood neither as a mere awareness deficit nor as an ordinary unauthorised banking transaction. It is a composite wrong situated at the intersection of impersonation, extortion, forgery, identity misuse, wrongful confinement, data exploitation and organised laundering. Using a doctrinal and institutional analysis of India’s post-2024 criminal laws, banking regulation, cybercrime reporting architecture and the Supreme Court’s continuing intervention in In Re: Victims of Digital Arrest Related to Forged Documents, the article evaluates the victim’s path from first contact to restitution. It identifies four justice deficits: fragmented offence construction, the exclusion of coerced-but-authenticated payments from conventional reimbursement logic, slow inter-institutional fund restraint, and the secondary victimisation produced by blame, repeated documentation and uncertain restoration. It proposes a victim-centred model built around coercion-sensitive transaction classification, a statutory rapid-freeze protocol, shared loss allocation, trauma-informed assistance, accountable mule-account governance and interoperable cross-border investigation. Justice, it concludes, must be measured not only by arrests and convictions but by the speed with which coercion is interrupted, funds are preserved, dignity is restored and institutional trust is repaired.