Fingerprint is an important tool used in crime detection and in getting conviction for the persons involved in crimes. But, police officers point out the need to simplify departmental procedures to facilitate easy and earlier crime detection.
The city and district police have a team of finger print experts who collect samples from the crime scene and send it by post to the centralised office of the Fingerprint Bureau in Chennai. A senior officer, who has been in various crime detection teams, said that it takes about a week for the team here to get a confirmation if the samples collected here matched with any criminal who has already been convicted.
In this process, there is much time that is lost.
Officers point out quite a few recent incidents where the accused were from other States or districts and fled the place after committing the offence.
Fingerprints of persons who have been already convicted are numbered and available at the centralised, State-level system. Samples of suspects are available only with the local police station or at the most with the district-level units.
This makes it difficult to match the samples collected from a crime scene with those reported in the nearby districts.
Senior police officers also have a word of advice for the public. In addition to the necessary safety measures they take to safeguard their money, jewellery and other valuables, residents should also keep the almirah, its handle, doors and windows regularly cleaned at home. This would help in collecting fingerprints of those miscreants who make an attempt on the house.
On many instances, the fingerprint experts find difficulty in identifying the fingerprint of the miscreant as they were mingled with those of the occupants of the house.
(Reporting byM.K. Ananth)
