The Kerala High Court has directed the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to compare fingerprints from a 2016 double murder scene with Aadhaar biometric records for Coimbatore district in neighboring Tamil Nadu, and to tell investigators where any matching individuals can be found.
Justice G. Girish issued the direction on October 14 on a petition from the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Crime Branch, Palakkad. The case concerns the killing of a middle-aged couple at their home in Sreekrishnapuram, Palakkad, allegedly during a robbery.
Police recovered six fingerprints from the scene. One suspect was identified through a match, but comparisons against more than 1,200 people failed to identify the others. Investigators asked UIDAI to check the prints against Aadhaar records for Coimbatore, where they believe the remaining suspects may be. After the authority refused, police went to the High Court.
The central government and UIDAI opposed the request, arguing that the law does not permit sharing information stored in the Aadhaar database and that matching latent prints from a crime scene against the database poses technical problems. They also warned that allowing the plea would bring a flood of similar requests. UIDAI said in 2018 that Aadhaar biometric data can be used only to generate Aadhaar numbers and authenticate their holders.
The court examined Sections 28, 29 and 33 of the Aadhaar Act and held that the confidentiality restrictions in Sections 28 and 29 do not apply when disclosure is ordered by a court not inferior to a High Court judge. Section 33 requires a hearing for the authority and the Aadhaar number holder, but the court said hearing the holders was not possible because their identities are unknown.
The law also bars disclosure of core biometric information. The court said that bar did not apply because the police were not seeking fingerprint or iris data, only the whereabouts of people whose records matched. Investigators will then have to collect fresh fingerprints from those individuals and compare them through normal investigative procedures.
The court rejected an argument that the Supreme Court’s Puttaswamy privacy judgment prohibited the request, saying the collection of information for a criminal investigation falls outside the privacy restrictions discussed in that case. It also found that the technical objections had been addressed. Police told the court that the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing had confirmed that crime-scene prints could be converted for comparison using the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
Justice Girish said the order was based on the exceptional facts of the case and “cannot be cited as a precedent to follow the same course in other cases which may arise in future.”
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
