First Finger Print Bureau in the world was established in Calcutta in the year 1897 and then it was shifted to Shimla in 1904 and functioned from Shimla in British era. After independence it was named as Central Finger Print Bureau (CFPB) and was shifted to Kolkata and finally to New Delhi under the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), MHA, GOI.
In Himachal Pradesh Finger Print Bureau was established in the Crime Investigation Department in year 2003 and then it was integrated with the DFS, HP in 2018 to bring scientific acumen in the FPB.
Himchal Pradesh Finger Print Bureau is continuously been strengthened by way of addition of new tools and techniques like FOCUS, Cyanoacrylate fuming chamber etc. The National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) given by the NCRB, MHA, GOI was installed in 2021 with the vision to digitize the entire Finger Print database. The chance prints found at the crime scene and slips recorded by the Police can be transmitted electronically for their comparison with the database to get the results within 4-5 minutes. The comparison will show past history if any.
During last three months, two thousand and seventy two (2072) finger print slips were transmitted to the national database. Out of them, three hundred and fifteen (315) slips found matched with the finger prints available in the database thus showed history of the repeated offenders.
The Himachal Pradesh State Finger Print Bureau has got accredited by National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) as per ISO/IEC 17025:2017 in order to bring quality in forensic reports in the year 2024 and become the first Finger Print Bureau in the North India to get accreditation and 2nd after Gujrat. With the new addition FORENSCOPE machine costing about Rs. 30 Lac the finger print can be directly recorded even from porous surfaces without using finger print powder.
The three days training was imparted to the experts of Finger Print Bureau and scene of crime officers w.e.f. 25.07.2024 to 27.07.2024 to use modern equipment in the investigations.