CID’s fingerprint database non-functional for a year

According to senior officers,an alternative database is being set up,but the non-functioning server has badly slowed down the process of print-matching and affected police probes across Maharashtra.

At present,Maharashtra’s Criminal Investigation Department has a fingerprint database of about 95 lakh persons collected in connection with various cases,which although remains stored on the centralised server of the Fingerprint Bureau of the CID in Pune,they can not be accessed right now. Copies of these records are also available as hard copies on paper at the regional centres.

CID chief,additional director general of police S P Yadav said,“The server of the centralised database is not working since last one year. It has definitely affected the speed and efficiency of the investigations.”

Senior police officers with the CID said individual police stations and other branches of the Maharashtra police have been collecting the fingerprints of the people connected to the crime and have been uploading it on this centralised server.

A senior officer said,“Individual police stations or branches deal with CID with two types of queries. They can ask if a specific sample matches with a person’s fingerprint. Or they can also ask us to find out a match for a sample from the database we have. Both these types of requests are taking a lot more time than that it used to earlier. Sometimes it takes several days. Probes across the state have been affected. As the server is not working,matching is done at five regional centres. There is also a possibility of us missing out on important links of the probe,if the fingerprint search has not been done properly.”

Retired additional director general of CID Madhav Karve said,“This has happened in the past too. The contract for maintenance was given to a company and it expired few years ago. After that,there has not been a competent bidder for it in the subsequent tendering processes. Thus it has always affected the working.”

Yadav added,“We have approached some companies for retrieval of the data from the non-functioning server. They have told us that there is a possibility that all the data will be lost. As part of the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network Systems (CCTNS),the data of fingerprints is also being digitised. We will soon have an alternate database. We have already completed a major chunk of the digitisation.”