Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday, June 20, 2026, highlighted the capabilities of the CrPI (Criminal and Prisoner Information) app, developed by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) under the Ministry of Home Affairs, describing it as the beginning of a new era of smart policing in India.

Context

In his post, Shah stated that the CrPI app would bring face, iris, and DNA matching onto a single unified platform, enabling law enforcement personnel to access the entire biometric database within seconds. He described the app as capable of maintaining biological measurements of arrested and convicted individuals while using video analytics to accelerate action in inter-state crimes.

Shah noted that the app is reaching all police stations across the country through more than 2,600 enrollment units, calling it the start of a new chapter in smart policing. The post was accompanied by a video.

Policy Backdrop

The CrPI app is the latest step in India's long-running effort to digitise and centralise criminal records. The Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) project, approved in 2009, first sought to network police stations for digital crime records. The National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS), launched in 2022, extended this by enabling centralised fingerprint matching nationwide.

The NCRB, functioning under the Ministry of Home Affairs since 1986, has been the nodal agency for compiling national crime data and maintaining criminal records. The CrPI app represents a consolidation of multiple biometric modalities — fingerprint, face, iris, and DNA — into one platform, addressing a long-standing coordination gap between state police forces.

Stakeholders and Impact

State police forces and central investigating agencies stand to be the primary beneficiaries of this platform. The ability to query a unified biometric database in seconds could significantly reduce the time taken to identify suspects, particularly in cases that cross state boundaries.

The video analytics feature flagged by Shah is aimed specifically at inter-state crimes, a category where coordination between multiple police jurisdictions has historically been slow. By centralising records and enabling rapid cross-matching, the app is intended to reduce dependence on manual record-keeping and inter-agency correspondence.

What's Next

The phased rollout of enrollment units to remaining police stations will be a key metric to watch as the app scales. Integration with existing infrastructure such as CCTNS will determine how seamlessly the CrPI app fits into the broader digital policing ecosystem already in place across Indian states.

As biometric data collection expands to cover more arrested and convicted individuals, questions around data governance, access controls, and inter-agency protocols are likely to come into sharper focus in the months ahead.