Rab hopes for quick crime-busting
The government is working on a highly-sophisticated criminal database, the first of its kind, to facilitate law enforcers in detecting criminal elements quickly by cross-checking the bank of biometrics and other records.
The Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) began implementing the Tk 2.5 crore-project in June last year in cooperation with Tiger IT Bangladesh Ltd, a local software firm, who conducted the national identity card project.
Installation of the software for the Rab Criminal Database was completed in June.
“As many as 150 particulars of a criminal including photograph, prints of 10 fingers, images of retinas, blood group and available previous criminal records are being stored in the database,” Lt Col Ziaul Ahsan, chief of Rab intelligence wing, said.
He said the database would be available on website, “but its access will be restricted”. It would be shared with other law enforcing agencies too.
“We have so far incorporated the particulars of around one lakh criminals, arrested by Rab since its inception in 2004, to the newly installed database,” Lt Col Ziaul said.
The project is likely to be launched after recording the particulars of the inmates in jails.
“On October 14, we wrote to the home ministry for conducting the task in 67 jails including a jail for female,” he said.
Rab teams, equipped with necessary tools, would collect the data in each jail.
In 2005, Rab had initiated preparing a similar database, but it could not be materialised.
Following the arrest of a person, law enforcers now would be able to know when, where and why the person was arrested earlier (if arrested earlier). Once launched, it would prevent arrested criminals, pretending to be innocent, from deceiving the law enforcers, he said.
Criminals, especially militants, use fake names and addresses, making the task for law enforcers — to arrest and identify them — very difficult. “Here, the database would work as a deterrent to the criminals,” he observed.
Earlier, Rab only kept fingerprints of arrested criminals for the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
A total of 200 Rab personnel were trained by the experts of Tiger IT Bangladesh Ltd to gather biometric information and other data. Those trained personnel are now working at all the 49 camps of total 12 Rab battalions across the country.
Rab sources said while preparing the database, they reviewed criminal databases of different countries.
Lt Col Ziaul said the database would also enable investigators to access and verify vital information of an arrestee promptly. “The lack of comprehensive information in many cases leads to the failure of a law enforcer’s part to promptly identify a criminal,” he added.
-With The Daily Star input
