Criminals’ biometric data: AMBIS tools gathering dust at police stations in city
| Date :30-May-2022 |
By Dheeraj Fartode
While the world is adopting advanced technical gadgets to sharpen investigation skills, Nagpur City Police, is lagging in warming-up to new-age ideas. Biometric scanners, including palm and iris recognition scanners, provided for aiding the force in investigations are not yet deployed for use. As a result, these digital tools are gathering dust at the police stations.
The tools are part of Maharashtra Police’s Automated Multi-modal Biometric Identification System (AMBIS) equipped with biometric data of 6.5 lakh criminals that can be accessed at a single click.
Deputy Inspector General of Police of Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Crime (HQRs) Sudhir Hiremath informed ‘The Hitavada’ that
Mumbai, Thane city, Navi Mumbai, Pune city, Nagpur city, Nashik city, Aurangabad city and Latur district police units were selected for the implementation of the project on pilot basis. “The police officers have to store fingerprints, iris and photographs of criminals using the system. The stored information has tremendous potential to identify the criminals and this first lead is most crucial in investigating the offences,” he said.
A fact-check at various city police stations revealed that the devices are not being utilised by Nagpur police and ground level men said they are yet to get instructions from their superiors on using the system. Non utilisation of costly devices is nothing but wastage of public money.
A police officer of Nagpur police stated that the policemen trained in the system have also been transferred to various other posts. Therefore, it is going to be difficult to handle the system if instructions are relayed now to deploy the instruments. Instead of using the digital palm scanner, police officers are still using century old manual scanners, it has come to the fore.
The AMBIS includes a computer with special software, portable palm scanner, biometric iris recognition scanner and camera to capture fingerprints from crime scenes. The State Cyber Department had selected a French company through tendering to provide both hardware and software for the project and total cost of the project is around Rs 55 crore. The usage of the latest machinery was part of modernisation of force, however force is not yet ready for transformation.
Fingerprints of 6.50 lakh criminals digitised
Before rolling out the AMBIS, the State CID has digitised fingerprints data of more than 6.50 lakh criminals recorded on paper from 1950 onwards. The system was earlier used at a few police stations in Mumbai on the pilot basis. AMBIS, however, is not part of the Crime and Criminal Network Tracking System (CCTNS). Instead, it uses the network infrastructure of CCTNS and has a separate server. Investigators can move to the crime spot with mobile live scanners and check whether the suspects involved in the crime have any previous criminal record by scanning fingerprints at the crime spot itself. In case, the new data does not match with old data stored in the system then cops can conclude that the criminal is a newcomer, a police official said.