Challenge

Tamil Nadu police department was looking to speed up the identification of criminals.

Police departments in India have traditionally used fingerprint capture technique to narrow down the pool of suspects as part of the investigation process. This involves having the suspects ink their fingers and roll them on paper. These prints are sent to the central fingerprint bureau for matching, and the results thereafter are sent back to the respective police station – all through post. The entire process is exhausting and time-consuming, which at times has led to innocents being put behind bars. On the other hand, due to inherent delays in obtaining results, police departments have often unable to oppose the bail pleas of arrested people with prior criminal record. The Tamil Nadu police department was focused on ironing out such issues to speed up daily operations and ensure transparency and accuracy in the investigation process.

Solution

TCS implements DigiGOV™ FACTS 7 to enable timely and accurate identification of criminals.

The Tamil Nadu police department chose to partner with TCS to digitally transform the fingerprint matching process. TCS analyzed the existing process, identified areas of improvement, and deployed:

• FACTS7 at the central site: Fingerprint Analysis and Criminal Tracing System (FACTS7) is a browser-based automatic fingerprint identification system (AFIS) application, which uses all ten fingerprints to make a match and is a lot faster than the previous versions in processing criminal identification.  Additionally, it is very accurate in examining the scene of crime prints or chance prints. This application offers many advanced features such as high-speed search, support for high volumes and workloads, processing fingerprints  with high resolution, and integrated submission of fingerprint and criminal attribute data.
  
  
• Browser-based FACTS remote query workstations: TCS implemented browser-based FACTS workstations at 36 district fingerprint bureaus. The FACTS7 application at the central site has the provision to maintain a database of different collections such as arrested, convicted, region-wise collections, and so on. The operators at district locations can now search within a collection, a combination of different collections, and even the entire database. FACTS7 can quickly process the search requests and throw up more accurate results.
  
  
• FACTS@PS for police stations: FACTS@PS is a web-based application that allows the police personnel to capture the fingerprints live, using scan devices and submit for person identification from the police station itself. Not only has this application shortened the entire process by automating suspect identification and eliminating the need for police personnel to scoot to central fingerprint bureau for matching, it has also reduced the need to rely on fingerprint experts by a significant measure.

Benefits

Tamil Nadu police now enjoys a faster and more accurate criminal identification process.

TCS’ AFIS solution has helped the Tamil Nadu police department in numerous ways, including: