Data & privacyNote
422 forensic items exempted from Make in India; Delhi Police specified Signal decryption
What a Home Ministry letter of 7 January, a Delhi Police tender and a Delhi laboratory’s contract of 6 November record about how tools that read phones and cloud accounts are bought.
A Home Ministry letter of 7 January conveys the Home Minister’s approval to exempt 422 forensic items, 274 of hardware, 129 of software and 19 of both, from the government’s Make in India procurement preference, for the National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU). Its second paragraph reads: “The above order would also be applicable to all the Central Forensic Science Laboratories.”1 The exemption is “tender specific”, lasts at most a year, and requires a check of the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) first. It became public as an attachment to an NFSU bid of 14 October, which the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) published on 11 November with Delhi procurement records.23
422
forensic items in the Home Ministry exemption of 7 January
Home Ministry letter
₹4,98,04,850
Delhi Police Crime Branch award for 11 forensic items
IFF, from GeM
₹4,58,72,000
Rohini laboratory contract for two MSAB XRY Pro units, 6 November
GeM contract
1
seller allowed to bid for the Rohini purchase
GeM bid
01What the 422 items are
The list covers forensic science broadly, from microscopes to DNA equipment.1 IFF counts 118 entries under digital and multimedia forensics, including tools from Cellebrite, Magnet, MSAB and Oxygen Forensics.3 NFSU’s request certified, “based on a thorough market survey and vendor analysis”, that “no equivalent indigenous alternatives with required specifications are currently available”.1
02What a Delhi Police tender specifies
A separate exemption, a Home Ministry order of 20 March 2025 for 19 products, covered the Crime Branch’s purchase of 11 forensic items for its cyber lab, bid on GeM on 25 March 2025 at an estimate of ₹4,18,02,189.45 Its specification asks for a tool to “Extract and analyse data from multiple sources: mobile devices, their backups, more than 100 cloud services and call data records”, using “user credentials and/or Tokens found in user handsets”. A token is the saved sign-in that keeps an app logged in. It also asks for the “Ability to extract encryption keys from the Android Keystore to decrypt Briar, ProtonMail, Silent Phone, and Signal apps” on Huawei phones with four named Qualcomm chipsets.6
IFF reports that GeM shows seven bidders and an award of ₹4,98,04,850, and that the award does not name the products supplied.3 That is a different purchase from the National Investigation Agency’s Cellebrite licence in our Note of 10 November, estimated at ₹4,98,15,000: two buys, two agencies, similar totals.9
Three Make in India exemptions in ten months, then a single-seller contract
Dated procurement records for forensic tools in Delhi and at central laboratories
Show tableHide table
| Date | Event | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| 20 Mar 2025 | Exemption: 19 products, Delhi Police | |
| 25 Mar 2025 | Crime Branch bid | Estimate ₹4,18,02,189 |
| 7 Jan 2026 | Exemption: 422 items, NFSU and central labs | |
| 20 Jan 2026 | Exemption: NIA's Cellebrite licence | |
| 28 Sept 2026 | Rohini bid, one seller named | |
| 14 Oct 2026 | NFSU bid carries the 422-item letter | |
| 6 Nov 2026 | Rohini contract, ₹4,58,72,000 |
Source: Home Ministry letters; GeM bids and contract, as published by IFF · as of 11 November 2026
03A single-seller contract at Rohini
The Forensic Science Laboratory at Rohini, under the Delhi Government’s Home Department, published a bid on 28 September for two units of MSAB XRY Pro, a Swedish phone-extraction tool. It marks “Single Tender Applicable” as yes, with the reason: “It will not be in public interest to procure the goods through advertised tender enquiry.” Themis Forensics Private Limited is the only seller listed, and the Make in India preference is marked “No”.7 The contract, generated on 6 November, is ₹2,29,36,000 a unit, delivery by 4 February 2027, with “IFD Concurrence”, the finance wing’s sign-off, recorded as “No”.8
Sources
- Ministry of Home Affairs, Women Safety Division, letter No. 23011/14/2024-WS-III to NFSU, with NFSU's letter of 9 December 2025 and the list of 422 items, published by IFF — 7 January 2026
- National Forensic Sciences University, GeM bid GEM/2026/B/8053471, published by IFF — 14 October 2026
- Internet Freedom Foundation, Your cloud, your chats, even your Tinder. What the Home Minister signed off on before Cellebrite — 11 November 2026
- Ministry of Home Affairs, order E.No.14013/06/2024-UTP to the Commissioner of Police, Delhi, published by IFF — 20 March 2025
- Delhi Police, GeM bid GEM/2025/B/6087335, Forensic Software and Gadgets for Cyber Lab, published by IFF — 25 March 2025
- Delhi Police, request for proposal for 11 forensic items for the Crime Branch Cyber Lab, technical specifications, published by IFF — with the bid of 25 March 2025
- Forensic Science Laboratory, Rohini, GeM bid GEM/2026/B/8069531, published by IFF — 28 September 2026
- Forensic Science Laboratory, Rohini, GeM contract GEMC-511687760885839, published by IFF — 6 November 2026
- Ministry of Home Affairs, letter to the Director General, NIA, on the Cellebrite licence, published by IFF — 20 January 2026
Disclosure. TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view.
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