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Days after a video of Hyderabad police personnel conducting random checks on phones of customers drinking tea at a cafe sparked concerns over privacy violations, police defended the action saying such checks were done to “prevent and detect illegal activities.”
The video, which surfaced on social media on July 25, showed the police personnel randomly singling out individuals, and asking them to unlock their phones before handing them over for checking.
Activists and citizens criticised the searches as unlawful. When Hyderabad-based researcher Srinivas Kodali pointed out the concerns over privacy violation and illegal surveillance on X, the Chaderghat police responded by saying that such checks were meant for detecting unlawful activities, such as “illegal betting applications, cyber fraud, online financial scams and other offenses.”
“At no point is there any intention to intrude into the private lives of citizens,” the statement read, claiming that personal photographs and private chats were not the focus of such checks.
However, the police did not explain the legal grounds for the checks, whether any warrants were served before doing so, or on what basis certain men were singled out for checking.
Chaderghat SHO Bramha Murari Kasani’s statement also said that the checking of phones was part of preventive policing “carried out in good faith to safeguard society.” He added that at no point “was there any intention to intrude into the private lives of citizens, personal photographs and private conversations.”
Hyderabad police have a history of performing such intrusive checks on citizens’ phones, sometimes even collecting their photographs and fingerprints, in the name of preventing crime.
They have also professed to singling out young men based on their looks, to check their phones and vehicles to trace drug use.
Hyderabad is one of the most surveilled states in the world, with a high CCTV coverage and alleged widespread use of facial recognition technology. The Telangana State Police Integrated Command and Control Centre has an extensive network of nearly one million CCTV cameras, along with AI-powered social media tracking.