Digital database to help police cut probe time

If someone snatches your bag on a city road and the police return it to you in half a day, do not be surprised. The Mumbai police is in the process of digitising its massive crime data, which will help policemen get instant information about criminals right at the spot of crime. Several new features—like matching facial contours, criminals’ code language and nicknames — are being added to the software, and officers can access the data in just three minutes, using laptops. The project begins with the South region, where data relating to the last 10 years is being collected from various police stations. Once it is complete, every new case will be added to the database, according to categories specified in the software. Police officers will be given laptops to access the data from the central server using a broadband connection. According to senior police officers, the database will have details like modus operandi, personal details and photographs of the accused, their nicknames or aliases, details of co-accused, timeline of a crime, area-wise prevalence of a crime and even details like the height, colour and facial features of a repeat offender or offenders belonging to a notorious gang. A senior officer from the region said, “This database is going to help us in a big way. Case investigation time will reduce considerably. Now we waste time looking for suspects from our massive records stored in dusty files. With the database in place, even if we get the rough sketch of a criminal, we can match it with the database, which will immediately throw up the probables. We will also get information about their associates and past crimes.” The database will also help officers look for crimes and criminals from a particular time period. “Some gangs work only in a particular time period like 6 pm to 10 pm. So, if a crime occurs during this period, we can check for a pattern and suspects,” said an officer. Rajesh Seth, chief technology officer with IT Consultants, the company that is designing the software, said, “Policemen will also know which officers investigated old cases of a particular criminal and get in touch with them for help. We hope to finish data compilation in a month-and-a-half from now.” Additional CP (South Region) Dr K Venkatesham said the project is still in the pilot stage. “We are trying to refine search capabilities based on multiple parameters. We hope it will help policing in general,” he added. Such a database has produced excellent results in Pune rural and some other places, said DCP (Zone 1) Vishwas Nangre Patil.

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