Tracking missing persons and identifying unidentified bodies have become easier for the police with the availability of information online. The police are now taking steps to empower the public in getting access to the same content so that the common man can track missing persons online.
Earlier the respective police station would send the pictures of missing persons or unidentified bodies for publishing in newspapers to identify or trace the persons. It was also manually sent to the nearby districts and the pictures were verified with that of the list of missing persons or unidentified bodies in those districts. But this was a highly cumbersome and time consuming process. Now, the pictures and the details of missing persons and unidentified bodies are uploaded online by the respective police stations soon after they received a complaint.
A senior police officer in the city said that the latest process has been of great help to the department over the last five years. The local police try to match the identity of the unidentified bodies here with the identity of persons who went missing in other places with the data available on the Internet. This has also helped in detecting such cases.
The police said that the recent effort to publicise the websites among the public was done to help them get direct access to information available to the police themselves. While the police have publicised a handful of websites where public could search for missing persons or unidentified bodies, the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS) system website of the police http://eservices.tnpolice.gov.in has more options using which the search could be made. Some of the search features that the website has are gender, age group, height range, date from which the person was missing, complexion, other visible identification marks and colour of dress of the missing person last seen wearing.
