Bail conditions requiring accused persons to share real-time locations, submit to biometric verification through mobile applications or remain subject to continuous digital monitoring are raising serious questions about privacy, personal liberty and the limits of judicial authority, according to the legal analysis reflected in the material. The issue centres on whether courts can impose technology-based surveillance requirements on people who have been granted bail and remain legally unconvicted.
The argument proceeds from the basic purpose of bail under Sections 437 and 439 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, and the corresponding provisions of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. Bail is intended to secure the presence of an accused person during trial while allowing conditional liberty.
Experts argue that an undertrial remains protected by the presumption of innocence and that restrictions imposed while granting bail should be limited to legitimate objectives such as ensuring appearance before the court and preventing interference with an investigation. Requiring an accused to carry a phone transmitting location coordinates continuously, or to use applications involving biometric monitoring, is presented as going beyond those objectives.
Supreme Court Ruling Puts Privacy at Centre of Bail Conditions
The central judicial authority cited is the Supreme Court’s ruling in Frank Vitus v. Narcotics Control Bureau, decided on July 8, 2024. The appellant, a Nigerian national who had spent more than eight years as an undertrial, had been granted bail subject to several conditions, including a requirement to drop a location pin on Google Maps so that the investigating agency could monitor his whereabouts.
A Bench of Justice Abhay S. Oka and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan held that a bail condition enabling an investigating agency to track every movement of an accused person, whether through technology or otherwise, would violate the right to privacy guaranteed under Article 21.
The source characterises the ruling as establishing a broader principle that bail conditions cannot be fanciful, arbitrary or excessive and must remain connected to the legitimate purpose of ensuring attendance and cooperation with an investigation. It also refers to the privacy principles recognised in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, where a nine-judge Bench recognised privacy as intrinsic to life and personal liberty under Article 21. State interference with privacy is subjected to tests of legality, necessity and proportionality.
Applied to digital monitoring as a bail condition, it is argued that constant surveillance may fail those standards if there is no clear statutory authority, if less intrusive alternatives are available and if the privacy intrusion is excessive compared with the investigative benefit.
The sources also cite an affidavit filed by Google LLC before the Supreme Court. According to the account, Google clarified that dropping a pin on Google Maps does not itself allow real-time tracking of a person or device. A shared pin is static, the user retains control over its sharing, and it does not provide an investigating agency with continuous visibility of the user’s movements.
Trial Courts Continue to Face Questions Over Tracking Clauses
Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, some technology-based monitoring conditions have continued to appear in some trial court bail orders. A November 2025 Delhi High Court case involving Harinder Bashishtha, where a trial court had required the accused to share his location with the investigating officer 24 hours a day through Google.
Justice Vikas Mahajan deleted the condition, relying on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Frank Vitus. The High Court held that a trial court could not require an accused person to keep the police constantly informed of his movements. The continuing use of such conditions is presented as evidence of a gap between higher judicial precedent and day-to-day bail practice.
It is also stated that neither the CrPC nor the BNSS expressly empowers courts to place an accused under permanent digital surveillance after release on bail. Bail provisions traditionally deal with bonds, sureties and reasonable restrictions concerning movement or travel, but the material argues that they do not expressly provide for biometric check-ins or continuous geolocation tracking.
Call for Uniform Bail Practices Without Continuous Surveillance
The experts propose moving away from continuous digital tracking and relying instead on conventional reporting conditions that are less intrusive. Periodic physical appearance before a local police station or a designated judicial officer, on a weekly or fortnightly basis depending on the seriousness of the case, is suggested as one alternative. Such mechanisms can serve the objective of ensuring accountability without subjecting an accused person to round-the-clock electronic observation.
The argument is that leaving compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling entirely to individual courts may not ensure uniformity, particularly when similar tracking conditions continue to appear after the judgment.
A common framework applicable across sessions courts and magistrate courts, the material suggests, could bring routine bail practice into line with constitutional privacy protections and the principle that restrictions on personal liberty must be lawful, necessary and proportionate.
The broader concern is that bail should remain a mechanism for conditional release pending trial rather than become a substitute form of electronic custody. The legal position presented in the material is that surveillance-based conditions must be tested carefully against both statutory authority and the protections of personal liberty and privacy under Article 21.
