There is a disturbing outcome of the March 1 Rameshwaram Cafe blast in Bengaluru. The desperate hunt for the missing perpetrator of the blast — who has been on the run, successfully evading his pursuers — has led to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) announcing a Rs 10 lakh reward for anyone who can help identify and point out the person, so he can be nabbed and brought to justice.
Blurred video grabs and images of this elusive man began doing rounds on TV channels and social media after the blast, but a day after NIA announced the reward, sketches of the suspect too have gone viral on social media.
But these sketches are drawn by people who are not authorized by the NIA or the police. These are common folks with talent of making sketches of facial features who are putting them out on social media to help people identify the culprit. And that is going viral.
This could take a threatening turn of targeting innocent persons. It has made probably thousands of innocent men even remotely resembling the sketches potentially vulnerable to possible harassment, assault or even incarceration for questioning.
The problem is this: The unclear images and videos have led to highly approximated sketches, left in considerable part to the imagination of their creators. These sketches can lead to any number of people with similar features with a cap, spectacles and a beard being assumed to be suspects. The doppelganger effect comes into play, except that it would be worse because the original images and video grabs have remained blurred yielding inaccurate details for the sketchers. And all these have gone far and wide, thanks to social media.
Normally, investigations involve sketch artists authorized by the investigators. These authorized sketch artists draw facial features based on descriptions given by eye-witnesses. But in the Rameshwaram cafe blast case, there were no eye-witnesses per se, because the details came out much after the blast took place, thanks to cameras inside and outside the cafe. The video grabs and images were those of the suspect walking on the streets, in buses, at bus stands and at different locations as he was tracked — through CCTV footage obtained hours after he tread those paths — from Bengaluru to Tumakuru to Ballari to Bhatkal. Images and video clips continue to emerge even as you read this.
However, the Rs 10 lakh as reward dangling like a hefty carrot, combined with social media as a tool to quickly spread the sketches far and wide, could play havoc by fueling greed over the generous amount promised as reward. That is the reason why senior police officials have criticized these sketches, calling them “unsolicited” and “distracting”.
Neither the NIA nor the police may have any estimate of the sudden proliferation of people acting as bounty hunters in pursuit of this suspect.
There was a case in the US Supreme Court in 1873 (Taylor Vs Taintor) which gave a degree of authority to bounty hunters to act as agents of bail-bond companies. The court, in that case, provided bounty hunters sweeping rights to pursue fugitives — even break into their houses without warrants — to apprehend them and hand them over to the jurisdictional authorities. Many of the targets in those cases were those who failed to appear in court in breach of the bail-bond agreements.
No such rights here, but Rs 10 lakh is not a small amount. Now, the NIA’s reward has turned into a lottery of sorts with common folks in pursuit of this elusive man, with an eye on the money. While just one person is likely to win that “lottery” — if at all success is achieved while at it — a lot of innocents could likely suffer, mistaken to be that suspect, based on whatever resemblance that hapless victim holds to the man on the run.
Still, do not give up wearing your cap this scorching summer for fear of even vaguely resembling that fugitive.
Nirad Mudur
Deputy Resident Editor, Karnataka
niradgmudur@newindianexpress.com