The State police will soon have their unique platforms on popular social networking sites, chiefly Facebook and Twitter.
Manoj Abraham, Inspector General of Police, Police Headquarters, says the law enforcement views such networks as reflective of the very society it polices and hence treats them as open sources of information.
With bulk of everyday communication shifting to the realm of Facebook and Twitter, thanks to Internet-linked smartphones and tablet computers, the police require to patrol the digital information highways and stamp their presence in cyberspace.
By monitoring such networks, the police believe that they can gauge public sentiment, to an extent, and ensure that unfolding events do not catch them by surprise.
Valuable information
Closer home, the State police say they have got information on trade of stolen articles and vehicles involved in hit-and-run accidents, thanks to certain tenacious cyber investigators of the police who trawl the Internet incessantly to detect online activities related, even remotely, to crimes and criminals.
The State Police came on Facebook, arguably for the first time, in April this year when Debesh Kumar Behera, City Police Commissioner, Kollam, opened an account on Facebook to seek information on ‘Adu’ Antony, a native of Kundara, who is wanted in connection with the murder of a policeman in the district on June 25, 2012.
The 49-year-old man tops the list of Kerala’s most-wanted.
The police initiated the account in the name of ‘Justice for Maniyan Pillai,’ the police driver who was stabbed to death when he challenged a van driven by the man believed to be Antony, an accused in scores of burglary cases in south India.
Law enforcers and IT professionals, working on a voluntary basis for the police, will monitor social networks from the State’s upcoming cyber security centre at Technopark here.
