About National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS):
- The NAFIS is a pan-India searchable database of crime and criminal-related fingerprints. It is managed by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) at the Central fingerprint bureau, based in New Delhi.
- The main objective of the web-based application is to collect fingerprint data of all the criminals from all the states and the Union Territories.
- It will enable law enforcement agencies to upload, trace and retrieve information from the database 24x7 in real-time.
- The Working Process of NAFIS:
- NCRB enables law enforcement agencies to upload, trace, and retrieve data from the database.
- Within 24 hours, NAFIS provides a unique 10-digit National Fingerprint Number (NFN) to each criminal who is arrested for the crime.
- The unique ID will be used for a lifetime of an offender. Different crimes registered under different FIRs will be logged as incidents belonging to the same NFN.
- The first two digits of the ID will be the state code of the state where the criminal is registered, followed by a sequence number. The state partition will have IDs belonging to a state.
- Apart from this, a digital record will be added as storage to match the fingerprints in the future.
- With NAFIS, it is possible to locate a person of interest in a matter of minutes and connect that individual’s name to any active warrants, warnings, or information about related criminal conduct stored in other police information reference systems.
