In a first in India, Maharashtra will soon have a digitised integrated database of biometric and photographic information of criminals—AMBIS (automated multimodal biometric identification system)—with the aim of increasing the conviction rate in the state. No other state in the country has such an advanced technology in its crime detection kitty at present. The machinery, procured from a leading French company, has already arrived in Maharashtra government’s headquarters. It will go live all over Maharashtra in the next 42 weeks. Once functional and joined with the CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems), it will help easy detection and identification of criminals. Leading crime detection agencies in USA and Europe, including the FBI, use this system, officials said. “The system integrates recognition of iris, fingerprints, palm-prints and face. It also integrates all these records with the criminal records. In fact, from grainy CCTV footage too, it can identify even those faces which have over 30 degrees of tilt. This system will be joined with CCTNS. So, the minute a police station uploads the fingerprints or palmprints of an accused, the system will immediately throw up searches showing the past record and criminal antecedents. This new system also has the capability to undertake complex mathematical algorithms to separate different fingerprints,” a senior home department official told The Sunday Guardian.
The identified through AMBIS will have evidentiary value in the court of law, and will help improve the rate of conviction in the state. It is a leap towards the modernisation of police machinery. The state government has worked in close collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and UIDAI (to get information on Aadhaar cards), for better implementation of the project.
Under this scheme, the government will supply scanners to all the police stations in the state. There are 10 police commissionarates and 35 districts in Maharashtra.
The project has been taken up at the cost of Rs 54 crore. Maharashtra’s Cyber Cell will handle the responsibility of handing over the technology to Maharashtra police and implementing it for them. At present, the conviction rate in Maharashtra is 58%.
Under this scheme, the government will supply scanners to all the police stations in the state. There are 10 police commissionarates and 35 districts in Maharashtra. Each of these police stations will have to keep aside a computer terminal which will be dedicated to be used for these scanners. These terminals will store data generated at each police station. This data will also be stored at a central server in Mumbai. The data of criminals and history sheeters, which has been digitised till now, will also be fed in these systems. This will help the police easily identify any accused with past criminal record.