Police camera ‘caught’ murder, rape accused at Jantar Mantar protest — at least 25 of them were in jail - The Indian Express

**Delhi Police Use Facial‑Recognition to Spot 25 Criminals at Jantar Mantar Protest**

Delhi police released footage from a CCTV camera installed at Jantar Mantar on 29 April, showing a crowd of demonstrators gathered to protest the appointment of Justice B. R. Gavai as the country’s chief justice. When the video was processed through the state’s facial‑recognition software, the system flagged 25 individuals whose biometric data matched records of people currently serving sentences for serious offences, including murder, rape, kidnapping and armed robbery. The police claim that the images prove the suspects were able to leave jail and join the protest, raising questions about prison security and the accuracy of official custody logs.

The list of flagged persons, obtained from the police’s “history‑sheeter” database, overlaps with a separate investigative report that named 2,873 individuals the Delhi police plan to question over the protest. Of those, 162 were listed as “supposed to be in jail” at the time of the demonstration. Human‑rights groups and legal experts have warned that the use of facial‑recognition technology, still in its infancy in India, may generate false positives, and have urged an independent audit of the data‑matching process. The Delhi government, however, defended the operation as a necessary tool to prevent “law‑breakers” from exploiting high‑visibility events to evade custody.

The incident has sparked a broader debate about the intersection of surveillance, civil liberties, and law‑enforcement accountability. Opposition parties have accused the administration of politicising the protest and using the incident to justify a crackdown on dissent. Meanwhile, prison authorities have been asked to explain how inmates could have escaped or been erroneously recorded as free, with some officials hinting at possible administrative lapses or deliberate manipulation of records. The matter is expected to be examined by a parliamentary committee, while the Supreme Court has been petitioned to intervene on the grounds of privacy and procedural fairness.

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