Indigenous technology: Fingerprint system to cover entire province

Data of 1.2 million suspects being added to system

LAHORE:

City police have completed collating the fingerprint data of 0.7 million suspects nabbed over the last decade by using the Automated Fingerprint Information System formulated in collaboration with the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), The Express Tribune has learnt.

Crime Registration Office (CRO) SP Omar Riaz Cheema revealed that the scope of the project was being broadened to cover the entire province. He said data of 1.2 million suspects available with the Punjab Fingerprint Bureau was being added to the system. He said police had completed scanning 0.2 million of the fingerprints. Cheema said the remaining data would be added to the system in three months.

Hailing the system as a revolutionary initiative, the SP said its formulation had enabled police to identify suspects by employing indigenous automation technology. Cheema said little money had been spent on the initiative as the PITB had developed the software which had been installed on the department’s computers that were operated by employees. He said police had identified four suspects with criminal records and two with false identities to date by matching fingerprints collected from crime scenes with system records to date.

Cheema said CRO officials manually retrieved data from police records before scanning it. He said a rolling matcher, a gadget, was used to identify similar fingerprints. Cheema said latent fingerprints collected from any place could be matched with those present in the system to reveal criminal records in 10 to 15 minutes. He said a mega matcher, an advanced version of the aforementioned gadget, could do the same in 10 to 15 seconds.

The SP said police officials could also access the system by using applications especially developed for android phones. He said officials could further narrow down search results by accessing multiple categories that filtered suspects details’ in accordance with their physical attributes, particulars etc.

Cheema said the system had been primarily formulated to track movement of criminals and facilitate investigations. He said police had also been planning to equip staff manning pickets with portable biometric devices to identify suspects entering and exiting the metropolis by using the system. Cheema said police would be able to ascertain suspects’ criminal history by merely scanning their fingerprints on the devices.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 20^th, 2015.