Srinivas Kodali, a Hyderabad-based privacy researcher, issued a legal notice Friday to the Commissioner of Hyderabad Police, Anjani Kumar. The release demands a halt to the illegal searches of mobile phones being carried out by police personnel across the city. The Internet Freedom Foundation, an organization dedicated to safeguarding the online freedoms and rights of Indian citizens, also assisted in sending the notice.

Kodali sent the legal notice based on a video report published by The Daily Siasat, a newspaper based in Hyderabad. In the video report, police officers stopped pedestrians, moto bikers, and auto-rickshaw drivers at random without any reasonable suspicion that they had committed or were engaged in the commission of any crime. The police then sought access to their mobile phones and searched them for phrases like ‘ganja,’ ‘marijuana,’ and ‘stuff.’

The legal notice said that under the Code of Criminal Procedure, police officers do not have the authority to stop citizens at random and ask them to unlock their phones to search the content of their texts. The notice cited the Karnataka High Court’s decision in Virendra Khanna v State of Karnataka, wherein the court held that searches of mobile phones require a judicial warrant unless there is an ongoing investigation and there are documented reasons to justify such intervention.

Furthermore, the notice stated that these searches were clearly not supported by judicial warrants and that no ongoing investigation necessitates such a widespread breach of privacy. It said that the police officers are conducting “a roving and fishing inquiry with no legal basis.” The notice further stated that the places where the searches are being conducted indicate that the police are targeting “lower-income groups and vulnerable and marginalised populations.”

The notice called upon the commissioner to commence disciplinary proceedings against the officers in question. It also demanded the disclosure of any prior warrants acquired by the concerned police officers to access citizens’ mobile phones, as well as any departmental notices enabling such conduct.