India has revealed the next phase of its control over the people of Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir. This is not a new policy. GPS tracking anklets were first introduced in IoJK in November 2023. But what was once an experiment has now been intensified and weaponized. What began as a pilot project has evolved into a full-scale system of digital policing to tighten control over an already suffocated population. When a Kashmiri undertrial walks out of prison and is immediately fitted with a GPS-enabled tracking anklet, it is not a bail condition. It tells the individual that physical release does not mean freedom. And it also tells the world that India’s occupation is evolving into a technological form of coercion where surveillance replaces law and control replaces justice.
Mukhtar Ahmed’s case is not an anomaly. A court in Udhampur granted him a lease, yet the court forced him to accept a wearable tracking device. The anklet feeds its location to authorities in real time. It restricts where he can go, who he can meet and how he can live. It places him under constant observation even though he has not been convicted of any crime. In any democratic system, this would be alarming. In IoJK, it has become routine.
Electronic monitoring is not inherently illegal. Many countries use it. But they use it in controlled, transparent and proportionate ways. In Jammu & Kashmir, the purpose is not reform. It is surveillance. It is not a substitute for imprisonment. It is imprisonment by other means. It is not an innovation in justice. It is an innovation in control.
International law is clear. Article 12 of the ICCPR guarantees the right to freedom of movement. Article 17 protects privacy and prohibits interference with personal life. Article 9 protects liberty and safeguards against arbitrary restrictions. A GPS tracker violates all three. It restricts mobility, extracts personal data and subjects the wearer to constant state intrusion. The UN Human Rights Committee has repeatedly warned that electronic tagging must be necessary, proportionate and non-discriminatory. None of these conditions is met in Kashmir. The devices are imposed selectively, punitively and without meaningful legal justification.
The context makes it even more troubling. Since August 2019, the Indian government has built a layered surveillance regime across Kashmir. Phone confiscations have become normalized. Biometric collection is now mandatory for basic services. Social media profiles are monitored. Drone patrols watch villages and orchards. Police use facial recognition cameras at checkpoints. The GPS anklet is simply the next layer in a system where the state seeks to know everything about a population it does not trust and does not treat as equal.
This is not secure. This is social engineering through technological pressure. It aims to discipline civilians, not protect them. It creates fear-based compliance. It converts ordinary life into a monitored performance where every movement is tracked and every deviation treated as suspicious. Supporters of the policy argue that such devices reduce prison populations. They cite international examples. But these comparisons collapse instantly. In other jurisdictions, electronic monitoring substitutes incarceration for low-risk offenders who have been convicted. In IIoJK, the anklet is imposed on people who have not been found guilty and who are often victims of wrongful arrest. It turns surveillance into a standard procedure. It treats undertrials as convicts. And it deepens the already vast power imbalance between the local population and the governing apparatus.
The psychological impact is severe. A GPS device is not just a tool. It signals to employers, neighbors and the community that the wearer is under state suspicion. It limits participation in public life because the individual knows their presence at a protest, a funeral or even a marketplace could trigger a police response. This is not freedom with conditions. It is a conditional existence.
The UN Standard Minimum Rules for Non-Custodial Measures (Tokyo Rules) emphasize that alternatives to detention must respect dignity, avoid stigmatization and ensure reintegration. GPS tagging in Kashmir achieves the opposite. It isolates the wearer. It brands them digitally. It reinforces the idea that Kashmiri bodies must remain traceable, trackable and controlled. It is a modern form of shackling, replacing iron with plastic but keeping the logic intact.
Even the supposed efficiency argument fails. If the state truly believed in due process, it would stop filing weak cases, stop using anti-terror laws against civilians and stop criminalizing dissent. Instead, it expands its surveillance toolkit and then presents surveillance as a solution to a problem it created. This is governance through technological coercion. It is not a security policy. It is not criminal justice reform. It is a strategic restructuring of domination.
In any conflict-affected region, the line between security and suppression is thin. In IoJK, it has vanished. The GPS anklet shows how the Indian state now governs through data rather than dialogue, through tracking rather than trust and through preemptive suspicion rather than legal fairness. It transforms a disputed territory into a laboratory for punitive technologies. And once normalized in Jammu & Kashmir, such tools will be easier to export to other dissenting populations across India.
The issue is not the device itself. The problem is its purpose, its target and its political context. The device is a symbol of a state that no longer trusts the law, a judiciary that cannot operate independently and a society that has been turned into a zone of suspicion. And it is a reminder that borders or checkpoints restricted freedom in Jammu and Kashmir. It is prohibited by technology that follows a person everywhere.
The digital shackles must be removed. The presumption of innocence must be restored. Surveillance cannot replace justice. And no occupation should be allowed to reinvent itself as a technological experiment in controlling human beings. Kashmiris deserve dignity, not devices. They deserve rights, not real-time tracking. They deserve freedom, not digital fetters disguised as lease conditions.
