Using a digitised database of over 2 lakh fingerprints of criminals involved in property crimes in Karnataka and combining it with a portable fingerprint reader and a mobile phone application, the Karnataka Police has created a real-time automated fingerprint verification system to check the criminal background of suspected persons.
Over the last 18 months, the Karnataka Police, under a national project titled Mobile-Crime and Criminal Tracking Network Systems (M-CCTNS) that was conceived in the year 2008, has provided as many as 2,500 portable fingerprint information systems to police stations across the state – with a large number being deployed in cities like Bengaluru and Mysuru.
The Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) in Karnataka, which was already proving beneficial in identifying mostly burglars and their criminal records on the basis of prints collected by experts from crime scenes, is now also being deployed to check the criminal records of people found to be moving suspiciously – especially at night – due to its new portable, real-time capabilities
A pocket-friendly scanner linked to a mobile phone app and a central database of fingerprints will now enable police constables to conduct on-the-spot checks of the criminal history of a suspicious individual without having to travel to a central office to check the data on the suspect.
Linked to a portable scanner, the AFIS has checked 93,645 fingerprints over the last year-and-a-half and has found 3,294 matches with criminal records – with the majority of instances occurring in Bengaluru during the night rounds of policemen, Additional Director General of Police Umesh Kumar, head of the Karnataka police modernisation wing, said.
‘There are over 2 lakh fingerprints of persons involved in property crimes in the database. The system only matches new fingerprints with the database of fingerprints and confirms whether there is a criminal record or not. There is no collection of fingerprint data,’ Kumar said.
‘Each machine costs only Rs 2,500 and can be provided to all districts. At present, four to five devices have been given to police stations with large numbers of cases, and other stations, around two each. The project has been implemented over the last few months,’ he said.
The portable fingerprint scanners are being used by the Bengaluru police on a pilot basis at a few police stations and by the Crime Branch. ‘There is no privacy issue involved. Like in the case of Aadhaar, which involves a question of yes or no regarding an identity, here it is whether there is a criminal record or not. It is part of the CCTNS project,’ Bengaluru Police Commissioner C H Prathap Reddy said.
