Police personnel across the country will now be able to verify the identities and criminal histories of suspects in real time through a new mobile application launched by Union home minister Amit Shah on Friday (June 19).

The application, named Abhigyan, connects portable fingerprint scanners with a national repository containing more than 1.3 crore fingerprint records of accused persons, convicts and inmates.

According to The Hindu, the app has been developed by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and is integrated with the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS), a centralised database of fingerprint impressions collected from individuals involved in criminal cases.

A press release issued by the Press Information Bureau said the application enables police personnel in the field to search the National Fingerprint Database using certified portable scanners, allowing them to identify suspects through fingerprint matching and thereby “makes field policing more efficient and responsive”.

During a demonstration of the technology, officials showed that the system could match a fingerprint with records in the NAFIS database within 35 seconds.

“During routine vehicle checks on the streets, biometric scans of any suspicious individual can be conducted to identify persons wanted in connection with crimes. Field officers can get the criminal history of the suspect in a few seconds. This will provide protection to the police officials, as they will be alerted of the presence of a hardened criminal,” The Hindu quoted from the demonstration of the app.

Describing the platform as a significant boost to policing capabilities, Shah said it would enhance operational efficiency at the ground level.

“Today, the NCRB launched its ‘ABHIGYAN’ mobile application. This portable version of NAFIS, with a database of 1.3 crore fingerprints, empowers on-field police personnel to directly access the vast criminal database right from their smartphones,” he said.

“Secured with two-step authentication, this app enables real-time fingerprint identification in mere seconds, further strengthening ground policing. Equipped with features like Fast ID, portable setup, and access to crores of records, the ‘ABHIGYAN’ app is an extremely powerful tool,” he added.

The launch, however, has drawn attention to the legal framework governing the collection of biometric data.

An NCRB official told the newspaper that the Criminal Procedure Identification Act, 2022 provides the legal basis for such identification measures. At the same time, Section 3 of the law confines mandatory collection of fingerprints and other measurements to those who have been arrested or convicted, or persons ordered to furnish security for maintaining peace or good behaviour under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.

The provision does not explicitly refer to random checks of individuals in the absence of evidence connecting them to a criminal offence.

Shah also highlighted the scale of the country's criminal databases, stating that India currently maintains around 1.29 crore fingerprint records, information on nearly 9.91 lakh narcotics offenders, details relating to about 3.65 lakh human trafficking cases and extensive prison-related data.

Emphasising the importance of these databases, the home minister said the information accumulated over the years constituted a strategic national resource and that the focus should now shift towards using this vast pool of data to strengthen the functioning of the criminal justice system.

“The next step is to ensure that the entire criminal justice ecosystem learns to harness this power and convert data into operational capability,” he said.