Delhi Police’s facial recognition vans are showing up beyond protest sites, raising questions

On the evening of Sunday, November 1, 2026, I spotted a white Delhi Police SUV marked “Facial Recognition System” and “South District” parked near the entrance of Nexus Select Citywalk, the mall in South Delhi’s Saket District Centre. I photographed it while walking past it, feeling mildly concerned and definitely uncomfortable.

My lawyer friends, now used to being surveilled everywhere, scoffed at it, as I wondered what it could be doing here, so far from protest sites, which is where they are publicly known to be. Whether any of the cameras on it were turned on or not, or whether it was simply parked there is information I could not confirm. MediaNama could not find any public announcement of a facial recognition vehicle for South District. Moreover, I saw no sign at the spot saying facial recognition was in use. So, this is not based on assumptions, but simply on information available to us publicly. Additionally, I have also written to the Delhi Police with questions about the rest.

A white Delhi Police SUV marked “Facial Recognition System” and “South District” parked outside Select Citywalk, Saket, on November 1, 2026

We have blurred the face of a person standing in front of the vehicle, because we do not know whether they have any connection to it. Two faces in the background have also been blurred.

Why does this matter?

We first heard about facial recognition units when it was claimed that protestors at Jantar Mantar were identified by the Delhi Police using CCTV vans armed with facial recognition systems (FRS). However, the presence of FRS vans in shopping malls on an ordinary Sunday evening raises questions which haven’t been answered yet. This includes questions like

• Where are these units placed?
• Whose faces do they scan?
• Which database do they check against
• Under what rules are they deployed?

What are these vehicles?

There are at least two kinds of facial recognition system vehicles being used by the Delhi Police, according to news reports:

• DP-DRISTHI: The Shahdara district police launched this vehicle at Gandhi Nagar market in February 2026. It “can scan several faces in a minute and match them with the police database of criminals having previous involvements”, The Tribune reported. “By deploying this mobile unit, the Shahdara District police aim to create a ‘zero-blind-spot’ environment in commercial hubs,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Shahdara) Prashant Gautam said at the launch.
• Ikshana: This was described as a “live CCTV surveillance vehicle” by a senior Delhi Police officer, and was inducted ahead of the G20 Summit in 2023, ThePrint reported. The feeds in Ikshana use facial recognition software, and it was spotted at Jantar Mantar during the protests in July, according to The Tribune.

There seem to be a plan to increase these surveillance vehicles as Delhi Police invited bids worth Rs 15.66 crore for 338 cameras with face recognition across Central and New Delhi districts on July 30, 2026, the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) reported after reviewing the tender.

What has Delhi Police said about how the system works?

This system has only been described by the Delhi Police in context of the Jantar Mantar protests in an affidavit before the Supreme Court in August. It was said that the system flagged 2,873 people with prior records over seven days, and that it did not “automatically capture, create, generate or maintain profiles of every individual present at the protest site”, MediaNama reported. While Delhi Police has not revealed which datasets populate the system, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the courts that no actions are taken automatically after a match is made.

What law governs this?

There seem to be no specific statutes, or any published standard operating procedures (SOPs) which MediaNama could find that governs police use of facial recognition in Delhi. In the Supreme Court’s 2017 privacy judgment of the K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India case, it was said that there needs to be a law-backed mandate for any state intrusions into privacy, serving legitimate aims while being proportionate. However, the government can exempt state agencies from the provisions of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, but it has not come into force yet entirely.

What comes next?

MediaNama is tracking and researching facial recognition technology being used by law enforcement agencies.

If you have seen a Delhi Police facial recognition vehicle at a mall, market or metro station, or anywhere else outside a protest or official event site, please write to us at anjali@medianama.com. Please include the date, time and place, alongside any photos, as this would help us collate legitimate data.

Questions sent to Delhi Police

MediaNama has asked Delhi Police:

• Why the South District facial recognition vehicle was at Select Citywalk, Saket, on the evening of November 1, 2026, and whether its facial recognition system was operating at the time
• Whether the vehicle is routinely deployed at malls, markets or other commercial areas in South District, and if so, where and how often
• Which database faces are compared against, who maintains it, and how long captured images and match results are retained
• Under which law, order or standard operating procedure Delhi Police deploys mobile facial recognition vehicles outside protests and events, and whether it will share a copy
• When the vehicle was procured, from which vendor, and under which tender
• Whether the public is told when facial recognition is in use, for instance through signs

Delhi Police had not responded at the time of publishing. This post will be updated if it does.

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