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Polity & Governance
Mahesh

25/10/23 07:44 AM IST

Centre to roll out DNA, face matching systems at police stations across India

In News
  • More than a year after the Criminal Procedure Identification Act (CrPI) was passed by Parliament, the Centre is all set to roll out ‘DNA and Face Matching’ systems at 1,300 police stations across the country.
Major provisions
  • The law that enables police and Central investigating agencies to collect, store and analyse physical and biological samples, including retina and iris scan of arrested persons, was passed by the Parliament in April 2022.
  • The rules were notified in September 2022.
  • The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a Central body tasked with rolling out the Act was assigned with finalising the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to be followed by police officials while recording the measurements.
  • The Act replaced the 100-year-old Identification of Prisoners Act, 1920 whose scope was limited to capturing finger impressions, foot-print impressions and photographs of convicted prisoners and a specific category of arrested and non-convicted persons under the orders of a Magistrate.
  • NCRB has cautioned against the misuse of databases by ensuring identification and deployment of appropriate safeguards, adding that that only designated officials must have the access in real time.
  • The MHA will bear the cost of hardware etc., the cost of secure Internet line and other operating costs will have to be borne by the State.
  • The tools and systems used by police should be technologically, legally and forensically sound and accredited.
  • The States have been asked to identify the locations and prepare the sites where the Measurement Collection Unit (MCU) may be established as suggested by the NCRB.
  • The Central body under MHA will be the repository of the database at national level.
National Automated Fingerprint Identification System
  • Conceptualized and managed by the NCRB at the Central Fingerprint Bureau (CFPB),the NAFIS project is a country-wide searchable database of crime- and criminal-related fingerprints.
  • The web-based application functions as a central information repository by consolidating fingerprint data from all states and Union Territories.
  • According to a 2020 report by the NCRB, it enables law enforcement agencies to upload, trace, and retrieve data from the database in real time on a 24×7 basis.
  • NAFIS assigns a unique 10-digit National Fingerprint Number (NFN) to each person arrested for a crime.
  • This unique ID will be used for the person’s lifetime, and different crimes registered under different FIRs will be linked to the same NFN.
  • By automating the collection, storage, and matching of fingerprints, along with digitizing the records of fingerprint data, NAFIS will “provide the much-needed unique identifier for every arrested person in the CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems) database as both are connected at the backend.
Source- The Hindu

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