When a UK-based doctor and social media influencer, Sangram Patil, was stopped at Mumbai airport earlier this year in connection with allegedly objectionable online content, it underlined a shift in how Mumbai Police are responding to crimes committed from beyond India’s borders. The intervention at the airport was not dramatic, nor out of the ordinary for investigators, but it highlighted the police’s intention of implementing the familiar mechanism of the Look Out Circular (LOC), sans the pomp and show it is normally associated with.

Traditionally associated with high-profile economic offenders and fugitives who flee the country after large-scale frauds, LOCs are now being increasingly used in cases involving digital crimes, both civil and criminal crimes — that include social media posts, threat emails and online  communications — where the accused may be physically located overseas but legally answerable in India.