CrPc amendment bill passed in Lok Sabha

New Delhi, Apr 5: The Lok Sabha passed on Monday a bill that accords sweeping powers to law enforcement agencies to collect data of convicted and accused people, after nearly five hours of fierce debate with the government saying the draft law was required to fight criminals and the Opposition expressing concern about possible rights abuses.

 

 

 

The Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill, 2022 seeks to update a British-era law to enable police to collect samples of a person’s biometric details, such as fingerprints and iris scans, if they have been arrested, detained or placed under preventive detention on charges that attract a jail term of seven years or more.

 

 

 

The bill makes it mandatory for people to allow collection of finger impressions, palm print impressions, footprint impressions, photographs, iris and retina scans, physical and biological samples and their analysis, behavioural attributes, including signatures and handwriting, among others. The draft law also empowers the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) to collect, store and preserve these records for 75 years and share it with other agencies. Resistance or refusal to allow the collection of data is an offence. “This bill’s sole objective is to help consolidate evidence, to send a strong message to society…with time, investigation methods have to change,” Union home minister Amit Shah said. He said that the bill was being brought with the sole aim of increasing conviction rates in the country. “I believe that justice delayed is justice denied. Rule of law can be established only when criminals are punished promptly.”

 

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The Opposition flagged several concerns — including of data storage, privacy violations, inadequate safeguards and chilling effect on free speech — but the government assured Opposition parties that it will not allow any abuse of power by law-enforcement agencies. Shah said the data will be stored on a centrally located “protected platform” maintained by NCRB and not accessible to individuals, leaving out any scope of its misuse. He also assured Parliament that rules for the law will be framed after consulting top experts from around the world to make sure there aren’t any privacy concerns. “As a government which has been given the responsibility by the public to keep the country safe, we assure you there will not be any misuse of data. Specific results for any request sent by a police station/agency to match any criminal’s details will be replied to through the central database. Any individual won’t will not have access to it,” Shah said, adding that the technology itself didn’t allow the leakage of measurements collected under the law.