CRIME INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT

Thousands of years before the birth of Christ, Finger prints were used on pottery to indicate the maker & brand of pottery.

Chinese used Fingerprints to sign legal documents as far back as three thousand years ago. Prints were placed on contracts to provide a positive means of identification. This method was described by Historian Kia Kung-Yen in 650 A.D

Before Fingerprinting was adopted as means of identification, man has tried a variety of methods such as Branding, Tattooing, Personal description, but none of these methods of identification was adequate until Fingerprinting was adopted. These older methods were barbarous in their application and fallible and led to mistaken identity from time to time.

The first systematic attempt at personal identification was devised & introduced by a French police expert, Alphonse Bertillon in 1883. He considered 11 measurements which includes height of person while standing, the height of trunk while sitting, span of the out stretched arms & lengths of left middle finger, little finger, cubit & left foot. Because this measurement of human body remains unaltered from the age of 20 to until death & no two persons have same measurement.

Up to 2 decades this was considered as accurate method of identification. Early in 20th century this was beginning to fall into disfavour. Its results were highly susceptible to error. The method received its most severe & notable set back in 1903 when a convict William West arrived in Fort Leavenworth Prison. A routine check of the prison files revealed that a William already in the prison could not be distinguished from the new prisoner by bodily measurements or even by photographs. In this case the photographs & measurements were practically the same. Subsequently, fingerprints of both prisoners clearly distinguished one from the other.

Principles of Fingerprint Science

The fundamental principles of Fingerprint science which are the basis for the adoption of Fingerprints as a means of positive personal identification are

V-I-P.

V – Variety: A Fingerprint is a unique individual characteristic. It varies from person to person. No two different digits have yet been found to possess identical ridge characteristics. They are identical only if they are produced from the same Finger of the same person.

I - Immutability: Fingerprints never change by accidental injuries, ailments or any other physical changes of a person. Temporary skin disfigurement may caused by Warts, Cuts, Infections, Burns, Skin diseases etc, but the ridges will again regain their original appearance after healing, that is, if the glands in the lower skin levels have not been affected. Permanent ridge destruction may be caused by disease or injury that damages the inner glands by ulcers deep cuts and burns. They live permanent scars on the fingerprints which are additional aids of peculiarities for an expert for identification. Permanent disfiguration and destruction of fingers can occur in Leprosy. Hence fingerprints of lepers are never taken.

P - Persistency: A Fingerprint remain permanent during an individual's life time until destroyed by decomposition after death. Persistency of ridge marks is observed principally in the details of ridges and in the general character of the pattern. The pattern grows simultaneously with the Fingers, hands and feet but the number of the ridges and its peculiarities remain unchanged. Criminals have often tried to change or destroy their finger prints, but without success.

Today, Fingerprint is the pillar of modern criminal identification. The identification & examination of Fingerprint is known as "Dactylography" (Dactylo = finger, graphy = writing) which means study of ridge patterns, containing sweat ducts on the friction skin on the palmer surface of hands, Fingers & sole of the feet including toes. It is also known as "Dermatoglyphics".

The State Finger Print Bureau of erstwhile combined state of AP state has been established in the Year 1959. During the State re-organization, the two FPBx were divided and on 14-06-2014 the separate Telangana State Finger Print Bureau was established. The Finger Print Bureau functions under the administrative Control of Addl. Director General of Police, C I D., Hyderabad. The Headquarter of the State Finger Print Bureau situated at Hyderabad and 27 District/City Finger Print Units at District/City levels.

FUNCTIONS: The Finger Print Bureau is an important Scientific Investigation wing of the Telangana State Police which helps various investigative agencies of Police Force in their fight against criminal activities. The Finger Print Bureau is the custodian of Criminal Finger Print Records of Telangana State Police. The Finger Print Bureau collects and maintains a large number of Finger Print Records for using them for Criminal Investigation.

1. The staff of FPB visit the scenes of crim for examination and development of chance prints on scene of crime articles suspected to have been handled by the unknown culprits during the commission of offence to establish the identity of the offender and assist the police in the investigation and detection of crime.

2. Furnish the information within seconds about the previous convictions/arrests of suspects, accused, O.V & Wanted Criminals (Absconders) through Palm Print live scanners installed at Police Stations and on field handheld Mobile Security Check devices.

3. Finger Print Bureau gives authentic and conclusive evidence about the forged documents, impersonations and of perpetrators of crimes through the examination of disputed documents containing Finger prints received from various courts, Banks, Revenue, Registration departments of state Government and CBI, Postal department etc., of Central Government.

4. Establish the identity of unknown dead bodies through Finger prints obtained and sent by the Police Stations.
5. Impart the training to the Police Officers of State & Central Government, Court Officials, Criminology Students etc. in the utilisation of Finger Prints in detection of crimes.

6. The staff of FPB attend the courts to depose evidence in which they furnished expert opinion.

AFIS (AUTOMATED FINGER/PALM PRINT IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM)

The main objective of the AFIS is to provide a functionality for creating, maintaining and matching of ten-digit Fingerprints obtained from arrested/convicted persons and the Latent prints disclosed at the various scenes of crime for detection of criminals.

The older Automated Finger Print Identification System (AFIS) which was installed in the year 1999 (FACTS) has been discarded from 30-04-2017 as it has become out dated in terms of software and Hardware. Papillon - Russia is the new AFIS of International standard and state-of-the-art technology along with its additional components of Finger/Palm print live scanners, Mobile AFIS and Mobile Security Check Devices.

The AFIS project has been implemented in a record time of 4 months and started functioning from 01-05-2017. The following are the details of major components. Data centre:

Fingerprint Bureau has setup a data centre with a futuristic view that the processing power and storage capacity will be sufficient enough for catering 5 times the existing database. The cluster of servers configured in Active- Active mode which will serve as a redundant when one server is down. The Disaster Recovery (DR) site setup and configured to sync the data continuously with the server. Whenever there is a mishap in the data centre site the administrators can activate the DR server in no time.

Storage:

The current database holds 7 lakhs 68 thousand Ten Print Slips of accused /convicted and 85 thousand unsolved Chance prints. The current storage is sufficient to store total 50 lakhs records which include Ten Print Cards, chance prints, photographs and demographical & criminal data.

Backup:

There are different types of backups taking from the server.

1. 1. Tape library
2. 2. Backup to the external hard disks (optional)
3. 3. Syncing of the data to the DR.

Security: Provides two level security firewalls.

Client Work Stations for districts/Cities Finger Print Units: It is a high-end desktop and the purpose of the client workstations is to process and submit the chance prints collected from Scene of crime to the central Server for matching. To verify the results of matching of ten prints and chance prints.

Palmprint live scan Work Station:

Palmprint live scanner is an electronic device useful for capturing high quality digital Finger and Palm prints in required formats and also search against the Finger print database. The age old and traditional method of taking Finger prints through ink, Slab and roller has been discarded.

Mobile Security Check: is a FBI certified single Finger live scan device connected to a mobile phone/Tab using android App. The app allows to capture Finger print of suspect on the field and match with the Finger Print records in the central server. The result will be pushed back to the mobile in real time to on field.

Mobile AFIS: A Mobile kit for Finger Print expert which enables him to obtain the Finger Prints of Inmates through Finger Print live scanner fitted in kit for elimination process with the chance prints found at scene of crime itself. The lifted chance prints can send to the data centre through on line from scene of crime and get the results immediately.

Highlights of the system

1. Improved Matching Performance, higher Accuracy and Speedier Outputs.
2. Telangana Police is the first state in implementing the Palm print live scan technology for enrolment of Palm prints which will contribute the detection of 20% more scene of crime cases.
3. The other technology “Mobile security check” consisting of FBI certified devices is also first of its kind in India for on-field verification of criminal history of the persons moving in the suspicious circumstances. TS Police is witnessing a high volume of suspects being identified in-the-field at real time.
4. The system is fully operational and already demonstrating success on detection of both the old cases (Which have not been traced out with old system) as well as new scene of crime cases and helping the IOs in putting the criminals behind the bars and recovery of huge amount of stolen property.

Database: As on 21-05-2018, the database size of the State Finger Print Bureau, CID is 7,94,681 and the size of the un-solved scene of crime chance prints is 68,824.

CCTNS INTEGRATION Sharing Arrest details of the ACCUSED/ CONVICTED, and Expert Reports on identification of chance prints with the Finger Prints of culprits on CCTNS through Web-Services using different search Criteria.