Central law enforcement agencies will now access and share their records with the national fingerprints database, the home ministry has directed, so that they are better able to identify criminals and hasten investigations, officials familiar with the development said.
The Central Bureau of Investigation, National Investigation Agency and Narcotics Control Bureau will be provided access to the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS). It will integrate the central agencies’ data with that of states’ police records of fingerprints and
Central law enforcement agencies will now access and share their records with the national fingerprints database, the home ministry has directed, so that they are better able to identify criminals and hasten investigations, officials familiar with the development said.
The Central Bureau of Investigation, National Investigation Agency and Narcotics Control Bureau will be provided access to the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS). It will integrate the central agencies’ data with that of states’ police records of fingerprints and portraits of criminals, bringing the law enforcement fraternity across the country on the same platform to trace and apprehend criminals, they said, seeking anonymity.
“The home minister directed that the CBI, NIA and NCB should be brought on board to access and share their fingerprints’ records through NAFIS,” a home ministry official said. “It will be a game-changer for the investigation and fingerprint fraternity, enabling them to upload, trace and retrieve the data in real time round the clock, thereby tracing the criminals and solving the cases faster.”
Read: U.P. to have criminals’ fingerprints database soon
NAFIS, a web-based application, is a central repository of criminal fingerprint data generated in the states and Union territories. It was launched by home minister Amit Shah in August last year.
Since its launch, NAFIS workstations have been installed in all states and union territories, and over one crore records have been integrated for investigators to see and verify.
Detailing how the process works, a second officer said the data repository generated in the form of fingerprint slips in police stations and digital fingerprints enrolled in districts for various schemes is stored in dedicated virtual partitions allotted to each state and central agency in NAFIS servers at the National Crime Records Bureau, which maintains the database. Only authorized officials can edit, modify or search the database.
The database facilitates integrated palm print, fingerprint enrolment and portrait capture, storage and matching.It enables national level searches from all NAFIS workstations installed across the country. It helps law enforcement officers in tracing criminals, solving crimes and mapping criminal history. The centralised database reduces delays in investigation due to logistics of physical flow of slips for manual verification by providing real-time results.
Read: Arches, loops, whorls: The science (we bet you didn't know) behind a fingerprint
“Agencies like CBI, NIA and NCB would be able to instantly access the database to verify or identify a criminal or look at patterns in corruption, terrorism and drug cases instead of physically sending the sample to the central forensic science laboratory, or other laboratories,” the second officer said.
While 16 NAFIS workstations have already been handed over to the NCB, 34 and 19 workstations will soon be delivered to the CBI and NIA, respectively, to be installed in different locations.
Over 10,000 cases were solved using the NAFIS database since its launch, Shah said in January. “One of those cases had remained unsolved for 22 long years,” he had said.
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