Team Blitz India
NEW DELHI: The Centre is creating a registry of foreigners involved in crimes in India to help law enforcement agencies to swiftly verify information about the suspect, according to a news report.
This will assist in solving cases related to illegal immigration, visa fraud, narcotics, cheating, and cybercrimes, the Hindustan Times reported quoting unnamed sources.
The computerised registry of foreign criminals’ data will be accessible to the federal and state agencies, as well as all police stations in India. The database will be operational round the clock, two people familiar with the development told the newspaper.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) – India’s crime database keeper under the ministry of home affairs (MHA) – is the nodal authority for the registry, they added.
NCRB’s ‘Crime in India 2021’ report, compiled 4,925 foreigners as involved in different crimes in 2,585 cases registered across the country (in 2021).
Of these, a majority were from Bangladesh (3,181), followed by Nigerians (798).
Apart from these, the NCRB report also included 250 Nepalese, 66 Sri Lankans, 50 Pakistanis, 23 Chinese, 11 Russians, and 242 people from African countries.
The Hindustan Times report cited MHA having launched a similar registry of offenders involved in sexual offences such as rape, molestation, stalking and child abuse – National Database on Sexual Offenders (NDSO) — in September 2018.
Besides, the National Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS), a central repository of criminal fingerprint data generated in states and UTs, was launched in 2021, it said.
