Legislative and evidentiary challenges faced by the Indian law enforcement agencies in social media-enabled wildlife offences
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.10111.18.5.28874-28885Keywords:
Conservation, Endangered Species, Illegal Wildlife Trade, Law Enforcement, Wildlife Prosecution, Cyber-Enabled Wildlife Crime, Wildlife Trafficking, Wildlife Law, Wildlife PolicyAbstract
Social media has become a popular platform for enabling wildlife offences in India. Protected species or their body parts are openly traded, displayed, and promoted on such platforms in violation of the law. When enforcement agencies detect such illegal activities on a larger scale, they aim to disrupt and prosecute the offenders. During this process, they face challenges while invoking the law, and issues concerning prosecution. This study aims to explore such challenges through the lens of enforcement agencies. While there is significant literature on wildlife offences taking place on social media, the challenge that unfolds after detection of such activity online from the law and prosecution perspective remains understudied. Hence, identifying and understanding them is necessary to implement and to effectively enforce the laws on the ground. This study primarily utilises a qualitative socio-legal framework by carrying out inductive thematic analysis on interview data collected from 25 experts using Atlas.ti software. The enforcement perspectives or themes were used as foundational empirical evidence for the doctrinal analysis. The key finding on the legislation side reveal that the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, does not explicitly address electronic or social media-facilitated offences, and no express provision regulates the indirect and unintentional promotion of such content. In relation to digital evidence, there are gaps in maintaining the chain of custody and complying with authentication and admissibility criteria. These findings, combined with others, offer insights into both objective and subjective hurdles incurred while proceeding in such cases. They signal the need for long-pending legislative reforms, skill development training on digital evidence handling, and awareness for effective on-ground enforcement to cope up with the contemporary challenges.
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