National Intelligence Grid slowly gathers pace, receives 45k requests a month

The National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), a platform for the police and investigating agencies to securely access government and private databases in real time, is getting around 45,000 requests a month, government officials told The Hindu. The platform, accessible only to security agencies, became operational last year after first being conceptualised in 2009 in the aftermath of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.

At the November 28-30 annual Director General of Police (DGP) conference, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Raipur, the law enforcement agencies, including the State police, were asked to scale up the use of NATGRID in all investigations.

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has asked States to liberally use the platform to access datasets which include details of driving license, Aadhaar registration, airline data, bank records, and also details of social media accounts which share posts on a particular issue.

Access to NATGRID is now available to Superintendent of Police (SP) rank officers. Earlier, it was only meant to be accessible to ten central agencies such as the Intelligence Bureau (IB), the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI).

Several State police officials told The Hindu that they faced certain hurdles while accessing the information on the platform.

An official said that logging in the portal required a lot of time while another official said that they had to wait longer to get the desired information, even though the platform is supposed to provide real-time data.

The platform, which had been in the works for over a decade and was first envisaged under Congress leader P. Chidambaram, received a fresh momentum under Home Minister Amit Shah in 2019. Under Mr. Shah, the differences between various security agencies were ironed out, and the application was made accessible to even the State police.

The Government is taking several steps to enhance security and maintain the sanctity of data in the wake of repeated cyber-attack attempts on critical infrastructure in the country, official sources said. In 2024, India witnessed over 20.41 lakh cybersecurity-related incidents, the highest number of incidents since 2020.

“Instead of security agencies seeking data from multiple sources, NATGRID provides the information on a single platform. The confidentiality of the user is maintained, and the registration of a First Information Report (FIR) is not necessary. Information can be secured to join the dots during an investigation or to develop intelligence,” said another government official.

In 2020, NATGRID signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) to gain access to the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) database, a platform that links around 14,000 police stations across the country. All State police are mandated to register First Information Reports (FIR) in the CCTNS platform.