CBI-led Interpol Red Notices double since 2023 amid tech, diplomatic push

Business Standard

20-07-2025

Interpol's Red Notices issued at the CBI's request have more than doubled annually since 2023, showing a paradigmatic shift in the country's pursuit of fugitives by building on the deliberations during the hosting of the Interpol General Assembly and G20 summit as well as by embracing technological sophistication, officials said Sunday.
The Lyon-based International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) had issued 25 Red Notices in 2020, 47 in 2021 and 40 in 2022.
Since 2023, the number of Red Notices issued on India's request spiralled with remarkable alacrity -- 100 notices in 2023, 107 in 2024 and 56 in the first six months of 2025, the latest data seen by the PTI shows.
The Interpol traditionally issued eight coloured notices for different purposes to 195 member countries, alerting them on a request from a country. It has added a ninth one -- Silver Notice -- on a pilot basis this year, in which India is also a participant, to track illicit assets parked abroad.
A Red Notice (RCN), the most important one to track a fugitive, is a request issued by Interpol to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender or similar legal action.
It is the first crucial step in pursuing the extradition of a fugitive who escaped to a different country to evade the law.
All state and central agencies submit their request for Interpol Notices to the CBI, which is the nodal agency for India for all Interpol matters. The CBI then makes the requests for the Notices to Interpol and coordinates with the intergovernmental organisation in follow-up.
"It is only after an RCN is issued that a fugitive can be located abroad. Once the alleged criminal is located, diplomacy and law enforcement work in tandem to secure the extradition or deportation," an official in the know of the process said.
The uptick was not only visible in terms of Red Notices issued on India's request, but also in other colour-coded Notices as well.
The Blue Notices, through which a country seeks information about a person, have gone up from 47 in 2020 to 68 in 2024 and 86 till now in 2025; Yellow notices, used for seeking details of abductions, disappearances or identity issues, have gone up from one in 2020 to 27 in 2024 and four in 2025 (till now).
In total, 145 Interpol Notices have been issued in 2025 till now, as compared to 73 issued in 2020. Last year, 208 Notices were issued by the Interpol, the data shows.
The increase in the number of Notices by Interpol at India's request can be attributed to a confluence of deft diplomacy, institutional assertiveness and technological modernisation, besides the meticulously hosted Interpol General Assembly in November 2022, followed by the G20 Summit in 2023, officials said.
On a special request from India, the Interpol General Assembly was held in 2022 here to coincide with the 75th Anniversary of Indian Independence, 25 years after the global confluence of police chiefs was held here in 1997.
Normally, each of the 195 member countries gets a chance to hold the annual event on a rotation basis.
The Assembly served as both a symbol and a catalyst, deepening the agency's operational rapport with Interpol's General Secretariat in Lyon, they said.
The G20 Summit held in 2023 further burnished India's image at the international level. Ostensibly an economic conclave of 20 big countries and regions, the event enabled ancillary security collaborations, lubricating internal legal cooperation and consensus on extradition of fugitives.
In both events, India made a strong argument in favour of the extradition of fugitives wanted by a country and the denial of "safe havens" to criminals.
The CBI, which is the National Central Bureau of India, also took a leap in terms of digital sophistication, employing advanced data analytics, digitised dossiers, AI-powered profiling and seamless integration with Interpol's I-24/7 network.
In 2023, the CBI top brass emphasised on making Interpol engagement seamless and cutting down on the processing time of requests coming from state police, besides building on the negotiations during the General Assembly and G20.
The agency developed an in-house portal, Bharatpol, operationalised in January, which made the process of RCN -- historically mired in paperwork and procedural torpor -- frictionless and cut down the time from an average of six months to three months.
The results translated in terms of extradition as well, with the CBI coordinating closely with Interpol, as well as state and central enforcement agencies, to secure the extradition or deportation of 134 fugitives since 2020. Of these, 23 were brought back this year alone.
In contrast, only 74 fugitives were returned during the decade between 2010 and 2019. The results are encouraging but far from the targets that the agency has set for itself.
"Thousands of Interpol requests are being issued on the request of big countries, while our requests are in the hundreds. We are moving forward and we have to further improve our processes to ensure that fugitives are not able to find safe havens anywhere," an official said.