From Identification To Surveillance: DNA Profiling, Genetic Data And The Constitutional Limits Of India’s Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022
Zoma Itrat Khan, PhD Research Scholar, Faculty of Law, Integral University, Lucknow
ABSTRACT
DNA profiling is the most discriminating identification tool in criminal justice, yet the databases built around it can turn evidence into a permanent biological record of people never convicted. This paper examines that shift from identification to surveillance and tests India’s response against the Puttaswamy standard. It explains what a DNA profile is and is not, traces how databases, familial searching, forensic genetic genealogy and consumer genomics extend State reach, and analyses the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022 (CrPIA) and its interaction with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act), with the United Kingdom and the United States as benchmarks. It argues that the CrPIA contains real but partial safeguards, leaves retention, destruction and secondary use of genome-bearing material under-constrained, and, through the DPDP Act’s investigative exemption, produces a regime in which commercial genetic data is better protected than State-held data. It closes with targeted legislative reforms.
Keywords: DNA profiling; genetic surveillance; right to privacy; proportionality; Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act 2022; DPDP Act 2023.
