Aadhaar info not conclusive proof in criminal probes: HC

Aadhaar card is a document that provides a conclusive link between the card-holder’s photograph, his/her fingerprints and iris scan with Aadhaar number: Court'Aadhaar card details cannot be taken as conclusive proof during an investigation into a criminal case'

Aadhaar card details — such as name, gender, address and date of birth — cannot be taken as conclusive proof during an investigation into a criminal case, the Lucknow bench of Allahabad high court has said. These entries may be subject to verification in case of doubt, the court said in a January 9 ruling, which was made public.

The court clarified that an Aadhaar card was a document that provided a conclusive link between the card-holder’s photograph, his/her fingerprints and iris scan with Aadhaar number.

A bench of justices Ajai Lamba and Rajeev Singh said, “If a person relies on Aadhaar entries as proof of address and date of birth, these cannot be considered conclusive proof under the Evidence Act.”

The verdict came during the hearing of a writ petition in which a woman challenged an FIR lodged by her mother about her kidnapping with Sujauli police station in Bahraich. In her FIR, the mother had said that her minor daughter was abducted by a man and his relatives. In her writ petition, the woman pleaded that she was a major and was not kidnapped but had married on her own free will. She alleged that her mother did not accept her marriage and lodged a false FIR against her husband and his family members. On the high court’s intervention, police investigated the case and gave a clean chit to the woman’s husband and her in-laws. The case was closed.

However, during the hearing, the court took cognisance of the aggrieved woman and her husband’s Aadhaar card details, which mentioned her date of birth as ‘January 1, 1999’ and his as ‘January 1, 1997’. The court was intrigued by ‘January 1’ in both the Aadhaar cards and said it found same date of birth in many such cards. Therefore, the court said, this must be clarified with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

On the court’s direction, UIDAI Lucknow regional office deputy director Jasmine filed an affidavit and appeared in the court. In the affidavit, she said, “Aadhaar is only proof that a person obtaining subsidy or service by identifying himself/herself on the basis of Aadhaar number is the same person who enrolled after providing biometrics and documents. If a resident does not have a valid date of birth document, it’s recorded on the basis of a declared date. If the date is approximate, the age is verbally communicated by the resident to the operator, based on which the year of birth is calculated. By default, the date of birth is recorded as January 1 of that calendar year.”

After this clarification by UIDAI, the court said name, gender, address and date of birth on the Aadhaar card can’t be taken as conclusive proof.