Doing away with the old method of pasting grainy images of culprits on railway platforms or bus stations, police are making the most of cyber space. They have now turned to online platforms to circulate images of wanted criminals.
To extend their reach, police are using their websites and platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, to seek assistance from the public in nabbing criminals. All this while, it was the public that would voice their complaints via images or videos posted online, seeking help from the police.
In a first of its kind, the Seshadripuram police went online with photos of suspects involved in the burglary of a real estate office this week in which valuables worth Rs. 8 lakh and cash had been stolen. The images of two security guards from Nepal, captured on a CCTV camera, have been put up online, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central) Sandeep Patil said.
“Photos or videos of culprits are usually handed over to newspapers and TV channels to help identify them, but we have recently started using social media platforms to circulate them, as they have faster and wider reach. We have hardly used the platforms for such purposes earlier,” he said.
Once the police put up the images, the online post was shared by nearly 100 persons in a short period of time.
A senior police officer said that in many cases involving suspects from outside Karnataka, they usually fled from the city immediately after the crime.
Officials said that online platforms help in raising awareness to a large extent. Since the pictures are automatically re-tweeted or shared by followers as well as other online police accounts, the chances of tracing them are higher, they said.
“In the case of the images posted online a few days ago, though the images have been circulated, we are yet to nab the culprits,” a source said.
