In June, NCRB director Ish Kumar said at a public event there is need for “limited access” to the Aadhaar database for criminal investigations. Minister of State for Home Hansraj Ahir said the government “will try” as “it appears to be very important." The next day, on June 23, UIDAI issued a statement clarifying that the Aadhaar Act does not allow Aadhaar data to be used for criminal investigations. It further said that it had never shared any data with a criminal investigation body. Now it emerges the Ministry of Home Affairs is proposing scaling up fingerprint collection and linking it with its Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS) to aid criminal investigations. The MHA is also proposing integrating facial recognition and iris scan, according to the Indian Express. Fingerprints, face recognition data to be integrated with central database NCRB is the nodal agency for implementation of CCTNS, which is envisioned as a real-time central database of criminals and crime incidents. It aims to connect all police stations across the country — with all their crime and criminal data — to a central database. The first phase of CCTNS involved connecting all police stations. In its second phase, the MHA is planning to scale up fingerprint collection and integrate the fingerprint database stored with Central Finger Print Bureau (CFPB), and use NIST Fingerprint Image Software (NFIS), a technology used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), for matching fingerprints. The MHA is collecting 30 lakh fingerprints by connecting data stored…
