Why a national DNA database?

India is now the most populated country in the world with a population of 1.4 billion. Due to the increasing population, we are faced with a crisis of identifying dead bodies recovered by the police. As of now, approximately 50,000 dead bodies remain unidentified every year. The police take measures to identify them by publishing their available phenotypic characteristics such as height, facial features, complexion, hair colour, tattoos, scars, and descriptions of clothes on several visual and print media platforms and recently through the zonal integrated police network (ZIPNet). Unfortunately, the current established protocol for the identification of the unknown corpses has not achieved much success and the efforts of the police officials remain futile as 80-90% of the bodies are still unidentified. Apart from these, more than 3,00,000 persons are also reported missing in India annually.