Gandiva is a high-end artificial intelligence and data analytics tool developed by India’s National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID). Gandiva helps law enforcement and intelligence agencies ‘connect the dots’ by analyzing massive amounts of data from disparate sources in real-time.

Named after the divine bow of Arjuna from the Mahabharata, the tool serves as a “sharp” analytical weapon to track suspects and identify patterns of organized crime or terrorism.

Key Capabilities of Gandiva

Gandiva serves as the analytical brain of NATGRID, providing several core AI-driven functions:

• Entity Resolution: This is its primary function. It identifies and links records belonging to the same individual across different databases (e.g., matching a person’s bank records with their airline PNR and telecom KYC), even if the data is slightly inconsistent.
• Facial Recognition: It can perform instant matches of a suspect’s image against databases like driving licenses, passports, and telecom records. It reportedly has access to over 100 crore (1 billion) facial entries and can even match faces partially obscured by masks.
• Multi-Source Data Analysis: It pulls data from 21 categories, including banking, travel, immigration, and tax records, to create a 360-degree digital footprint of a person of interest.
• Predictive Analytics: The tool analyzes historical data to identify suspicious movement patterns, financial “hawala” trails, and potential terror-financing networks before an event occurs.

Integration and Access

• NPR Linking (2025): In December 2025, Gandiva was integrated with the National Population Register (NPR), allowing investigators to see family-wise demographic details of nearly 119 crore residents.

• Wider Usage: While NATGRID initially restricted access to 11 central agencies (like RAW, IB, and NIA), it has since expanded access to State Police officers of the rank of Superintendent of Police (SP) and above.
• The “Sudarshan” Companion: Gandiva often works alongside Sudarshan, another NATGRID analytics platform focused on real-time data visualization and machine learning for threat assessment.

Why it Matters?

Before Gandiva, if an agency wanted to track a suspect’s bank transactions and flight history, they had to send separate requests to individual banks and airlines, taking days or weeks. Gandiva reduces this process to minutes, allowing for “intelligence-led policing” without necessarily needing an FIR to begin the initial data correlation.