India has figured a unique way to expedite investigations in criminal cases

In a bid to expedite investigation of crime across India, the Ministry for Home Affairs will setup a national fingerprint database to record pan-India criminal data.

Fingerprint database of around 28 lakh convicts and those arrested for criminal offences will be collated from all the states.

Reportedly, the Delhi-based Central Finger Print Bureau (CPFB), at present, has data of more than 9.7 lakh finger print records of convicted or arrested persons in digitized form.

However, more than 18 lakh finger print records with finger print bureaus of states and Union Territories are not linked to this central database.

The MHA has decided to gather all records from the state bureaus and make them part of the national database, for which the National Informatics Centre is creating a 'cloud' for this integration.

Once the data is collated at the CPFB, real time data based on fingerprints will be furnished, in case police raises any query from any part of the country.

Presently, investigating agencies send finger prints lifted from a scene of crime for matching to their respective state finger print bureau, which runs them past its own record. If there is no match, the prints are then sent to the CPFB and finger print bureaus of other states.
This indeed is time consuming.

(Image: Indiatimes)