NEW DELHI, MAY 15,
The Home Ministry plans to outsource the preparation of the proposed sex offenders’ registry to the private sector. Private contractors are expected to design and maintain the database that will be integrated with the Aadhaar database.
A Ministry document said the database would contain details of persons who posed a “low danger to the community” as they were not likely to engage in criminal sexual conduct on account of being involved in “technical rape” pertaining to “elopement, consensual sex [with major]”.
Criminal history
The Home Ministry said the offenders would be classified on the basis of their criminal history to ascertain if “they pose a serious danger to the community”. The data will be stored for 15 years in the case of those who pose a low danger, 25 years for those posing “moderate danger” and lifetime for “habitual offenders, violent criminals, convicts in gang rape and custodial rapes”.
The information on “arrested and chargesheeted” offenders will be available only to law enforcement agencies, whereas the data for “convicted” offenders will be accessible to the public and can be searched on various parameters such as State, district, police station and even modus operandi.
The database will contain records (including photographs and fingerprints) related to offenders across India and will also include records on juvenile offenders and paedophiles based on reports by district nodal officers. It will also contain the current status of the offender as updated by the police station and the district nodal officer.
On Monday, the Home Ministry floated a request for proposal document for “Development and Implementation of National Registry of Sexual Offenders” seeking to select a System Integrator to “design, procure/develop, supply, implement, operate and maintain” the database.
On April 27, 2016, the Centre informed the Rajya Sabha that the registry would be maintained by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). On April 21, in the wake of outrage against the gangrape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua district of Jammu, the Union Cabinet reiterated that a sex offenders’ registry was being created to compile the data on such offenders.
A Home Ministry spokesperson said the private contractors would only develop the platform and the confidentiality of data would be maintained.
“The private operator will only design the platform, the input and management of data will be available with law enforcement agencies. The data pertaining to passports has been developed by a private party, it is being run efficiently,” the spokesperson said.
