NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday asked the Centre to respond to a plea asking if missing children can be traced by using Aadhaar biometrics, then why cannot the same system be used to identify the dead.
A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice V K Rao asked the Centre and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to respond to the application by February 5, the next date of hearing.
Social activist Amit Sahni had filed the petition seeking the court’s direction to the Centre and the UIDAI to utilise Aadhaar biometrics to identify the unidentified dead bodies. Sahni, in his application, has referred to some recent news reports, in which the UIDAI claimed to have traced more than 500 children by using Aadhaar biometrics.
In the previous hearing, the UIDAI had informed the court that it was technically not possible to match the fingerprints of an unidentified body with the biometrics of 120 crore people stored in its database.
The main petition sought a direction to the Centre, the UIDAI, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and the states to scan the biometrics of the unidentified bodies and process them with the Aadhaar portal to trace any pre-existing biometric details.
In his petition, Sahni also sought directions to the Centre and the UIDAI to share the pre-existing Aadhaar details, if any, without any delay with the NCRB and the states for the identification of dead bodies.