The Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) database for Telangana, it appears, has a lot of missing links. Right from confession statements to photographs of arrested criminals and other details are missing, thus leaving the system incomplete and flawed.
The CCTNS was envisaged as a comprehensive information system for police departments and other law enforcing agencies in the country. Any meaningful analysis of crimes and criminals for preventive and detective purposes was supposed to be primarily based on the CCTNS database. This was one of the key reasons for adopting it nationally. Incomplete data or erroneous data would mean that meaningful analysis and use of the system would be defective.
According to sources, several important details like residential address, age, occupation, description roll, confession statements, father’s name and photographs of arrested criminals, traced and untraced persons and section alteration information in missing cases were either unavailable or not entered in a proper format. Apart from this, spelling mistakes and typos were abundant.
It was found that of the total 5,416 persons arrested in various important cases since June 2018 in Telangana, not a single confession statement was uploaded. Only 85 photographs of the arrested persons were available. Columns for basic details like the father’s name were blank in 1,085 cases while addresses in 1,562 cases were incomplete.
Further, of the 23,163 cases of missing persons, which remained untraced, only 9,894 photographs were uploaded on the CCTNS database. Photographs of the remaining 13,269 missing persons were not uploaded.
Director-General of Police M Mahender Reddy recently issued a Circular Memorandum to all officials asking to update columns including those for confession statements, photographs and other crime and criminal information in the CCTNS database.
Senior police officials have asked Station House Officers to ensure uploading of missing data and to update the CCTNS database at the time of the arrest itself and also to update other details during investigations expeditiously. “In some cases, officials may not enter details properly out of carelessness or negligence.
So we have advised them that all the data should be correct and entered properly,” an official said. “Good quality data will help us reap the benefits of technological advances and pay back the resources invested in the CCTNS, TSCOP, CAT, CDAT, DARPAN and other tools developed by the Telangana Police,” said a senior official. #KhabarLive
