The Hindu : All police dts. to be linked to fingerprint bureau

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 26, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu

All police dts. to be linked to fingerprint bureau

By K.T. Sangameswaran

CHENNAI APRIL 25. All police districts and Commissionerates will soon be linked to a modern system for identification of fingerprints installed in the State Fingerprint Bureau (FPB).

At present, 19 police districts have been linked to the Remote Query Work Station (RQWS) and the others and the Commissionerates will also have access to the computerised system, work on which is likely to be completed in six months, say official sources. There are 29 police districts (excluding two railway police districts) and six Commissionerates in the State.

The arrangement to identify fingerprints, christened the Finger Print Analysis and Criminal Tracing System (FACTS), started functioning in June 1999 at the headquarters of the bureau, perhaps the oldest FPB in the country.

The introduction of the system, at a cost of Rs.1.81 crores, formed part of police modernisation.

Besides facilitating quicker identification of the accused, the system, which has a capacity of five lakh fingerprint slips, enables fixing those who commit crimes in places other than their own, possibly under the impression that the police may find detection difficult.

Further, any need for bureau personnel moving from one district to another to identify criminals is obviated.

About 1.68 lakh fingerprint slips have already been fed into the FACTS database. A total of 260 cases were identified when 12,000 chance prints were fed into the system for matching.

The identification of criminals has led to the recovery of property worth about Rs.1.18 crores, claim the police.

At present, the facility is available in Chengalpattu-East, Madurai rural, Tirunelveli rural, Kancheepuram, Vellore, Tiruvallur, Villupuram, Dharmapuri, Virudhunagar, Sivaganga, Ramanathapuram, Tuticorin, Pudukottai, Erode and Dindigul districts and Coimbatore city, Tiruchi city and rural, Salem city and rural, and Chennai.

The Madurai and Tirunelveli Commissionerates and other districts are to be covered in the next phase.

But the railway police districts, in Chennai and Tiruchi, have not been considered for providing the facility, the official sources say.

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