Kerala High Court lets crime scene fingerprints be matched against the Aadhaar database in a Palakkad case

17 October 2026

Justice G. Girish allowed W.P.(Crl.) No. 639/2024, filed by the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Crime Branch, Palakkad, against the Union Government and the Deputy Director of the Unique Identification Authority of India, and directed that fingerprints collected from a crime scene be compared with fingerprints in the Aadhaar database.
The Court held that the disclosure restrictions in Sections 28 and 29 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016 do not apply where information is sought under an order of a court not inferior to a High Court judge.
On Section 33 it held that the hearing requirement in the first proviso was satisfied in substance because the persons were unidentified, and that the second proviso barring disclosure of core biometric information did not apply, as no transmission of fingerprint or iris data was sought and only the whereabouts of matching individuals would be shared.
Six sample fingerprints had been lifted from the scene of a 2016 double murder at Sreekrishnapuram in Palakkad and compared against more than 1,200 people without success; the investigating officer's request to UIDAI to match them against the Aadhaar database for Coimbatore had been rejected.
The Court stressed that the order rests on the exceptional facts of the case and should not be cited as a precedent. It is reported as 2026 LiveLaw (Ker) 579.