The Juvenile Snatcher, the Crowd and the Dropped Phone
At 19:40 on a Saturday, a guard at a shopping mall in Chandigarh hears a woman scream. A boy of about 16 runs past him with a mobile phone in his hand, and the woman shouts that he snatched it. The guard chases and catches the boy about 60 metres outside the mall boundary, near the bus stop. The boy fell while running and has a bleeding cut on his elbow and a swollen wrist. He is shouting that he is a minor and that the guard has no right to touch him. A crowd of about 25 people gathers, and two men say 'hand him over to us, we will deal with him'. The phone is not on him; he says he dropped it while running. No police officer is in sight. The agency's SOP says guards may 'detain suspects and hand them to police' but says nothing about force, search, juveniles or property recovery. The boy's friend is filming the whole thing on a mobile phone.
1. Does the guard have a legal basis to hold the boy? State the provision, its conditions, and the limits on what he may do while holding him.
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Yes, on these facts there is a defensible basis, but it is narrow and it ends the moment the police take over.
The provision: Section 35 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (the old Section 43 CrPC) lets a private person arrest someone who, in his presence, commits a non-bailable and cognizable offence, or against whom a reasonable complaint, credible information or reasonable suspicion of such an offence exists. Snatching and robbery under the BNS are cognizable and non-bailable, and the guard saw the boy running with the phone immediately after the woman's cry and her identification. That is 'in his presence' plus reasonable grounds.
The limits, which is where most answers and most guards go wrong:
- The power is to arrest and hand over, nothing more. The boy must be handed to a police officer without unnecessary delay, or taken to the nearest police station if no officer is available.
- The arrest must rest on grounds he can state, not on appearance or community.
- No custodial interrogation, no search of the person beyond a pat-down for weapons, no seizure of his belongings into the guard's own pocket, no threats to 'settle' the matter.
- He is a juvenile. Under the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 a child in conflict with law goes before the Juvenile Justice Board and cannot be kept in a police lock-up; the guard's duty is to hand him over intact, not to punish him. No beating, no public humiliation, no handcuffing to a railing.
- He is injured: basic first aid is part of the duty of care, not a favour.
- Call the police control room (112) immediately and note the time of the call.
2. The crowd demands the boy be handed over to them. How should the guard use force, and what must he refuse to do?
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Force is governed by the right of private defence under the BNS (Sections 34–44). Two ideas decide this situation:
- The right is only as much force as is necessary to repel the attack, and it ends when the threat ends. Once the boy is on the ground and not resisting, there is no threat from him; anything further is assault, wrongful confinement and criminal intimidation - committed by the guard.
- The right is against an aggressor, not a licence to punish. The public mood ('we will deal with him') is precisely what private defence does not authorise.
So the practical response is protective, not aggressive:
- Move the boy into the guard cabin or the gate area that is covered by CCTV and near the second guard - separation from the crowd is the best protection for everyone.
- Stand between the boy and the two men, keep his own voice low and repetitive: 'Police are coming, he will be handed to them, no one is touching him.'
- Ask a colleague to note the two men's descriptions and the time; do not argue with the crowd.
- Get first aid for the elbow, and do not pull or grip the swollen wrist.
- Do not grab or delete the friend's phone. Interfering with the recording turns the guard into the offender and destroys the very evidence that will justify him.
If the crowd closes in physically, the guard withdraws with the boy towards the mall entrance and calls 112 again; he does not fight a crowd of 25 over one juvenile.
3. The phone is later found under a bench by a sweeper. What should the guard do with it, and why does the method matter?
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The phone is now case property, and how it is handled decides whether the snatching case stands up.
Correct handling:
- Do not pocket it, do not hand it to the woman on the spot, and do not switch it on or scroll through it.
- Place it in a paper cover or polythene bag, seal the cover, and write on the seal: date, time, exact place found, found by whom, and the sweeper's name as the person who actually recovered it.
- Photograph it in the position found, if the agency phone is available, before lifting it.
- Note the IMEI or any number visible on the handset or its cover, without dismantling it.
- Hand it to the investigating officer against a receipt or an entry in the police case property register. If the owner presses for it, hand it over only after the police agree, and record her name, ID and the time.
- Enter the whole sequence in the incident register while it is fresh, with the times.
Why: this is chain of custody. The defence will ask who held the phone between the recovery and the police station. If it lay in a drawer for two days, or the guard's fingerprints are the only ones on it, or a photo was deleted, the case weakens and the guard becomes a suspect instead of a witness. The same logic applies to the boy's injury - the guard's own record of the fall, made the same evening, is what protects him from an allegation that he caused it.