New methods, new concerns
Proposed powers to collect data of convicts and accused persons raises constitutional worries
The ways in which investigative agencies identify criminals and suspects have drastically changed over the course of the 21st century. With technological advances — including biometric identification, footprint impressions, photographs, physical and biological samples and fingerprint analysis — agencies are vying for effective, reliable and accurate ways to ascertain a person’s identity to evolve a new, modern crime-control model. The Union government, this week, introduced in Parliament a new draft legislation — the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Bill 2022 — which allows law enforcement authorities to collect, store and analyse details, including biometrics, of all convicts and detained persons. The Union minister of state for home affairs, Ajay Mishra, said the new law was needed to make way for modern techniques to capture and record appropriate body measurements, pointing out that the existing law (which the new bill is to repeal and replace) dates back to 1920 and allowed only fingerprint and footprint impressions of a limited category of convicted persons. Mr Mishra said the new bill would make the identification of accused persons easier, which, in turn, will increase prosecution and conviction rates in courts.
The Centre’s move, however, met with serious concern from the Opposition and civil society over possible contraventions of constitutional rights, chiefly the right to privacy and the right against selfincrimination. Amid a growing awareness for personal privacy and data protection, an argument can be made that the proposed law, which obligates not only convicts but also those detained under preventive laws or suspected of committing an offence to give body measurements, would infringe the right of bodily autonomy as well as the right to be forgotten as a facet of privacy rights. Another crucial concern relates to the compliance of the bill with Article 20(3) of the Constitution, which explicitly states that no person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself. It has been contended that the bill, therefore, goes beyond the House’s legislative competence and must be struck down. The provision that implies the use of force to take measurements violates the rights of the prisoners laid down in a body of Supreme Court judgments.
The question thus arises if the new crime-control model envisaged by the Centre satisfies the dueprocess model mandated by the Constitution. In its present form, the bill throws up some crucial questions of compliance with the constitutional rights of convicts and accused and those who may be political protesters with genuine demands.