India’s parliament has cleared a contentious bill that grants sweeping powers to police to collect biometric and physical measurements of people who have been convicted, arrested or detained.
The Criminal Procedure Identification Bill (CPI) seeks to update a British-era law to enable police to collect samples of a person’s biometric details, such as fingerprints and iris scans, if they have been arrested, detained or placed under preventive detention on charges that attract a jail term of seven years or more.