Mr. S.Q. Masood, a resident of Hyderabad, was stopped by police officers on 19th May, 2021 who took his photographs without his consent, and even ordered him to remove his mask. Soon thereafter, he wrote to the Police Commissioner of Hyderabad reporting this incident and sought to know whether these photographs are being fed into a database and whether any privacy protections are being put in place in respect of such photographs. When he received no response, he approached us to send a legal notice to the Police Commissioner of Hyderabad on his behalf. We did so on May 31, 2021, and urged the Police Commissioner to cease such photograph collection exercises in the garb of COVID lockdown enforcement, since they achieve no objective except infringing on the fundamental rights of citizens.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://internetfreedom.in/hyderabad-police-force-people-to-remove-their-masks-before-photographing-them-we-sent-a-legal-notice-saveourprivacy/