NAFIS (National Automated Fingerprint Identification System, India)
Definition
The NCRB-operated national fingerprint database deployed from 2022, integrating criminal fingerprint records across all 28 state FSLs, 5 CFSLs, and state police fingerprint bureaus. Provides latent-to-ten-print and ten-print-to-ten-print search for India-wide criminal investigations.
- Full name
- National Automated Fingerprint Identification System
- Operator
- NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau)
- Deployed
- From 2022
- Coverage
- 28 state FSLs, 5 CFSLs, state police fingerprint bureaus
- Search types
- Latent-to-ten-print and ten-print-to-ten-print
Common questions
How does NAFIS differ from a state-level fingerprint bureau database?+
Before NAFIS, state fingerprint bureaus largely operated separate records, so a print left in one state could not easily be searched against records held by another. NAFIS integrates records nationally, letting an investigator search a latent print against the pooled criminal fingerprint records of all participating states and central labs at once.
What is the practical difference between latent-to-ten-print and ten-print-to-ten-print search?+
Latent-to-ten-print search compares a partial, often lower-quality crime scene print against the full ten-print database to identify a suspect, while ten-print-to-ten-print search compares a complete known set of prints, such as at booking, against existing records to check for a prior identity or record, a generally higher-confidence comparison.
Does NAFIS connect to India's Aadhaar biometric database?+
NAFIS is a criminal-records fingerprint system operated by NCRB for law enforcement matching, and is a separate system from Aadhaar, which is a civil identity database; the two are not the same system, though both belong to India's broader biometric infrastructure.
Related terms
- AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System)
- An automated system that compares a fingerprint query (typically a latent print from a crime scene) against a reference database to identify...
- Bozorth3
- The NIST open-source fingerprint minutiae matching algorithm distributed as part of the NIST NBIS toolkit. Rotation- and translation-invariant. Serves as the reference...
- Cold-Case Hit
- An AFIS identification event where a crime scene latent previously returned as no identification (NI) matches against a ten-print record enrolled into...
- FBI NGI (Next Generation Identification)
- The FBI's biometric repository system, fully operational from 2015, replacing IAFIS. Contains over 175 million ten-print records, 30 million palmprint records, and...
- I-24/7
- Interpol's secure global police communications network connecting 196 member countries. Used by national fingerprint bureaus to submit searches against and receive candidates...
- IDENT1
- The UK national fingerprint database operated by the Home Office and managed by Idemia. Holds approximately 10 million ten-print records and a...
- NIST ELFT-EFS (2012)
- The NIST Evaluation of Latent Fingerprint Technologies: Extended Feature Sets, a large-scale evaluation of both automated AFIS algorithms and human examiner performance....
- Similarity Score
- The numerical output of an AFIS matching algorithm indicating the degree of minutiae correspondence between a query and a candidate. Higher scores...
- UIDAI Aadhaar Biometric Repository
- The UIDAI's central biometric store containing ten-print and iris records for over 1.37 billion enrolled individuals under the Aadhaar Act 2016. Operates...