Fingerprints play a vital role in identification of criminals and investigation of crimes and with the advancement in the fingerprint technology changes in the laws are required to consider fingerprint as the main evidence in the court, said lokayukta Justice PP Naolekar at the inauguration of two-day 17th All India Fingerprint Conference organized at State Police Headquarters on Tuesday.
In the State, fingerprint impression and palm impression have been added under the amendment which has been made in the section 2 (A) of the Identification of Prisoner
Act-1920.
He shared regarding different laws in which photograph, fingerprint and other measurements could be taken of a criminal for identification and said that it is a welcome move by the state of sanctioning Rs16.09 crore for Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) project.
In his address Naolekar discussed Identification of Prisoner Act-1920, Criminal Tribals Act-1911, Evidence Act and other important related laws for identification of criminals.
The state has data of 3.76 lakh fingerprints and more than one lakh fingerprints have been collected last year. Out of the 3.76 lakh fingerprints, 3.5 lakh fingerprints are in the form of digital data. A total of 226 fingerprint scanners are placed at different police stations of Madhya Pradesh.
At present finger prints are used for Adhar Card, Bank, transport, Passport and examination. Senior officials and technical officer of SCRB and NCRB participated in the seminar.
Director General of NCRB Archana Ramsundar said that sharing of data among States, use of IT for Criminal Intelligence would be discussed during the conference. NCRB has a strong database of 10 million fingerprints, she added.
DGP Surendra Sinh said that fingerprint science and classification originated in India and its development has made fingerprint data collection easier.