NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to consider the PIL as a representation that seeks to create a robust mechanism to recover or destroy personal data of Indians allegedly stolen and stored on foreign servers.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalia Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi was hearing the PIL filed by Nitish Kumar, a cybersecurity consultant.
While the court refused to consider the PIL on the grounds that it related to information technology and had nothing to do with legal aspects, the ICJ asked the petitioner to approach the government regarding his complaints.
The petition requested the court’s intervention to enforce the Digital Personal Data Protection Act of 2023, and mitigate the rise of “digital arrests” and extortion associated with data breaches.
While acknowledging the seriousness of the concerns raised, the bench leading the judicial inquiry noted that the cases were “highly technical” and required administrative and technological expertise rather than judicial intervention at this stage.
“Since the case is of a very technical nature, it seems to us that the effective course would be to approach the Ministry of Electronics and IT. Let this petition be made as a supplementary representation. They should consider it,” the bench said.
Kumar, who championed the case, asserted that data stolen by entities in at least five foreign countries is being used as a weapon against Indians.
He stressed that sensitive information, including fingerprints and personal identifiers, is used to facilitate transnational crimes such as digital arrests.
“Unless there is an extradition treaty,” the council said, the accused cannot be brought here to face the law.
“If we cannot return the data, we can at least restructure and save it,” the petitioner said.
The petition sought to direct the Center to recover or destroy personal data stolen from foreign jurisdictions.
It also sought immediate implementation of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 and the establishment of a special investigation team to monitor the data theft investigation.
After deciding the petition, the bench granted the petitioner liberty to file the petition as a supplementary representation to MeitY.
“The petitioner is said to have brought the matter to the notice of the Union through clarifications on how to activate a comprehensive data protection mechanism in the future and destroy such stolen data to prevent its misuse,” the statement read.
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