Delhi Police Deploy AI Glasses to Scan Republic Day Crowds

Delhi Police officers will wear AI-powered smart glasses to surveil crowds during India's Republic Day parade on January 26, 2026. The glasses scan faces in real time, matching them against a database of 65,000 known criminals and wanted persons.

It's the first time Indian police have deployed facial recognition wearables at a major national event.

The Technology

The glasses are made by AjnaLens, an Indian tech firm. Each device contains a built-in camera connected to a mobile app that links to police criminal databases. When the system spots a face match, it sends an instant notification to the officer's phone.

According to Additional Commissioner of Police Devesh Kumar Mahala, the device can "scan the face of individuals in the crowd and compare them against a bank of 65,000 known criminals."

The AI isn't fooled easily. Delhi Police claim the algorithms can identify people through disguises: masks, makeup, caps, glasses. The system can even match current photos with images from 10 to 20 years ago.

Beyond facial recognition, the glasses include thermal imaging. Officers can detect concealed weapons or metal objects invisible to the naked eye.

The Scale

Over 1,000 police personnel will wear the smart glasses during the parade. Delhi Police declined to reveal how many units they purchased or what they paid.

The deployment is part of a broader surveillance infrastructure:

10,000+ police officers in New Delhi district alone
3,000+ CCTV cameras integrated with video analytics and facial recognition
30+ control rooms monitoring live feeds

Delhi Police called it a step toward a "future-ready District Police Unit."

The Problem

India has no law regulating facial recognition. None.

While privacy was recognized as a fundamental right by India's Supreme Court in 2017, there's no data protection statute that limits how police can collect, store, or use biometric data. The government's proposed Personal Data Protection Bill has been stuck in limbo for years.

Civil liberties groups have sounded alarms. A 2021 Amnesty International report flagged Hyderabad as a city of particular concern for facial recognition overreach. Researchers have documented how Indian police deployed facial recognition at protests, surveilling citizens exercising their constitutional rights.

The tech itself is unreliable. Studies repeatedly show that facial recognition algorithms perform significantly worse on darker-skinned faces, particularly women. A system scanning 65,000 faces through a crowd will generate false positives, and in a country where wrongful detention carries few consequences, those errors hit vulnerable communities hardest.

No Consent, No Limits

Here's what makes this different from, say, airport facial recognition: there's no opt-out. Every person in the crowd gets scanned. The database includes "known criminals" but also "persons of interest" (a vague category with no clear definition).

Once your face is captured, what happens to that data? Delhi Police hasn't said. How long is it stored? Who can access it? What oversight exists? Silence.

India's proposed National Automated Facial Recognition System (NAFRS) would eventually connect state and central databases into a unified surveillance network covering 1.4 billion people. The AjnaLens glasses are a step toward that infrastructure.

What It Means

The Republic Day deployment is a showcase. Delhi Police wants to prove the technology works before expanding it to other events, other cities, everyday policing.

In the United States, facial recognition at major events is controversial. Several cities have banned police use of the technology entirely. The EU's AI Act restricts real-time biometric surveillance in public spaces.

India is heading the opposite direction: deploying first, regulating never.

Sources

Published: January 25, 2026