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Bibek Debroy: Herschel and Henry

OFF THE RECORD

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Bibek Debroy New Delhi
Last Updated : Feb 15 2013 | 4:55 AM IST
A few years ago, a friend went through a divorce. In addition to the usual trauma, he was upset about the fact that he had to affix his fingerprints (thumbprints to be precise) to the form. Not just divorce papers, but many real estate-related forms also have such stipulations, not to speak of driving licences. Even though scheduled forms require signatures, implying fingerprinting for those who are illiterate, in actual practice, fingerprints are necessary in addition to signatures. And the educated reaction is generally one of abhorrence, partly because of the suggestion of illiteracy and partly because the act of fingerprinting is messy in India. Many such educated people travel to the United States and, since it is the United States, they have accepted fingerprinting without grumbling. As they have for driving licences. For both driving licences and US immigration, you no longer have pads that have to be inked and leave smudges on your fingers. It has made life less messy. We need to distinguish between two different aspects to fingerprinting, the identity part and the criminal association. The former doesn't necessarily imply the latter and our resistance is also largely a reaction to the criminal association. After all, the Independence movement in India (or Gandhiji's campaign in South Africa) and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa are also associated with resistance to fingerprinting.
 
Yet, the original intention behind fingerprinting was identification. The criminal association came later. When fingerprinting was used, almost 4,000 years ago, in Assyria and China, that was for purposes of identification. And Chandak Sengoopta's extensive documentation (Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India) shows that this was Sir William Herschel's original intention in India also. Following Rajyadhar Konai's palm-print on a contract in Hooghly district in 1858, fingerprints became a mandatory form of signature across a wide range of transactions and contracts. William Herschel collected fingerprints as a hobby and the high and mighty of the land readily obliged, including the Maharaja of Nadia. The criminal association seems to have come in 1891, with the then Inspector General of the Bengal police, Sir Edward Richard Henry. His database was prisoners and he therefore used fingerprints to identify criminals. When he moved from India to Johannesburg, he adopted those principles in South Africa and later, in Scotland Yard. The earlier Bertillon system of identifying criminals through body measurements was superseded. The Henry intention remains deeply ingrained, but not so much the original Herschel one.
 
Consider the Identification of Prisoners Act, passed in 1920. This defines measurements and the definition includes "finger-impressions and foot-print impressions", with states like Madhya Pradesh including "palm-impressions" also. The law (Section 3) allows measurements and photographs of convicted persons. It also allows (Section 4) measurements and photographs of non-convicted persons, provided the offence leading to the arrest involves rigorous punishment of one year or more. Section 4 can be applied if a police officer requires it. In addition to this, Section 5 allows a magistrate to order an arrested person to be measured or photographed. But the real killer is Section 7, which has to be quoted in its entirety. "Where any person who, not having been previously convicted of an offence punishable with rigorous imprisonment for a term of one year or upwards, has had his measurements taken or has been photographed in accordance with the provisions of this Act is released without trial or discharged or acquitted by any court, all measurements and all photographs (both negatives and copies) so taken shall, unless the court or (in a case where such person is released without trial) the District Magistrate or Sub-divisional Officer for reasons to be recorded in writing otherwise directs, be destroyed or made over to him." Unless convicted, or unless the DM or SDO directs to the contrary, all measurements will be destroyed.
 
The criminal association, as opposed to the identity intention, continues. Every person is innocent unless proved guilty. That's an acceptable proposition. But there is an additional presumption that fingerprinting implies guilt. One can quibble about conviction rates in criminal cases. Regardless of quibbling about the precise figure (the quibbling is usually about the denominator), there is unanimity that conviction rates are lower than 5 per cent. All the detective serials on television, where finger-prints are matched with databases, are mostly nonsense. The Central Finger Print Bureau (CFPB), in existence since 1955, has limited utility. Since we are legitimately obsessed with principles of natural justice, there is no database, except for convicted criminals. But do concerns about natural justice require the "identify intention" to be discarded? For extraneous reasons of a colonial legacy, this may have been a valid concern in 1920. This is yet another example of a statute, or a section from a statute, which has not been revamped to reflect the reality of an Independent India and the advent of technology. In the non-government sector, biometry has been accepted as part of life and even SEBI has talked about finger-printing investors. Yes, there are concerns about invasion of privacy and security of computer databases, but these aren't insurmountable hurdles. We should go back to Herschel.

 
 

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First Published: Dec 27 2005 | 12:00 AM IST

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