Law and order: Repository of additional biometric details of accused to help police in probe

Madurai District Police have got a new measurement capturing unit that would capture vital biometric details revealing identification of accused persons.

Hitherto, the police were collecting personal details like name, age and place along with some identification marks. Besides, photograph and fingerprints were all the police were getting from the accused with which they had to carry out scientific investigation in cracking crime cases.

“Mostly, we were dependent of fingerprints available at the scenes of crime like house burglary and murder and match it with the database available with us,” Superintendent of Police B. K. Arvind said. The police in the recent past had switched over to get digital fingerprints of the accused for speedier verification. Every police station has got this facility of obtaining digital fingerprints.

However, in many cases the fingerprints alone were insufficient in further progressing with the probe.

“The Criminal Procedure (indentification) Act, 2022 has now authorised the police to collect more biometric data including palm prints, scan their iris and have photographs in multiple angles,” the SP said.

Some permanent identification marks like scars or tatoos could also be photographed and uploaded in digital formats in the central repository.

As of now, the district police have set up a photo studio-like infrastructure with lighting facility to capture images of arrested persons in different angles. Besides, trained police personnel would also extract the iris, palm prints at the measurement capturing unit set up at Armed Reserve ground.

“All the arrested persons would be brought to the Armed Reserve complex. In future, the facility could be set up at different locations or at every police station,” the SP added.

Over the years, when the database is built up, it would help the police to take up search of accused digitally with the forensic evidence lifted from the scenes of crime.. Tracing the accused could become much easier as the database will become much reliable.