Context: India has inaugurated a National Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a centralised database of fingerprints.

Historical Background

• A system of fingerprinting identification first emerged in colonial India, where it was tested before it spread to Europe and beyond.

• William Herschel, the chief administrator of the Hooghly district of Bengal, from the late-middle 1800s onwards, used fingerprinting to reduce fraud and forgeries, in order to ensure that the correct person was receiving government pensions, signing land transfer deeds, and mortgage bonds.

• The uniqueness of every individual’s fingerprints was first proposed in Europe by the German anatomist Johann Mayer in 1788.

• It was confirmed through detailed studies by the Scottish doctor Henry Faulds. However, Herschel had begun to implement fingerprinting as a means of identification in Bengal around the same time.

• The Bengal Police were able to create fingerprint records which replaced the use of anthropometric measurements by 1897.

• The first ever Finger Print Bureau in the world was established at Writer's Building at Calcutta in 1897.

What is NAFIS?

• NAFIS is developed by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) at the Central Fingerprint Bureau (CFPB) in New Delhi.

• The 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.

• In April this year, Madhya Pradesh became the first state in the country to identify a deceased person through NAFIS.

Utility of NAFIS

• It enables law enforcement agencies to upload, trace, and retrieve data from the database in real time on a 24×7 basis.

• It would help in the quick and easy disposal of cases with the help of a centralised fingerprint database.

How does it work?

• 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.

• The 2020 report states that the ID’s first two digits will be that of the state code in which the person arrested for a crime is registered, followed by a sequence number.

• 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.

• It will be included in the CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems) database as both are connected at the backend.

Is this the first time that such an automation project is being attempted?

• Upon the recommendations of the National Police Commission in 1986, the Central Fingerprint Bureau first began to automate the fingerprint database.

• It began with digitizing the existing manual records through India’s first Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFI) in 1992, called Fingerprint Analysis & Criminal Tracing System (FACTS 1.0).

• The latest iteration, FACTS 5.0, which was upgraded in 2007, was considered to have “outlived its shelf life”, according to a 2018 report by the NCRB and thus needed to be replaced by NAFIS.