LAHORE - The Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) has developed an identification tool, Criminal Record Identifier (CRI), installed in most of the police stations in Punjab.

CRI is a coproduction of the Punjab Police and PITB. It is a fingerprint-based identification tool that compares the suspects’ fingerprint to the central database of fingerprints.

The central database server contains the database of criminals from all over the province. The matching capabilities are so powerful that it accurately matches at a speed of over 20 million matches per second.

The CRI, being used by the Punjab Police since November 1, 2016, has so far matched 9258 finger prints with the police criminal identification record.

The system is being actively used in 142 police stations of the major cities of the Punjab province. So far 67,812 finger prints have been gathered and on average 30-40 individuals get matched per day.

The system has helped in arresting the suspected elements as in a most recent case through latent fingerprint a habitual robber with three criminal index cards, involved in robbery in the area of police station Mansoorabad, Faisalabad was arrested. He has three index cards with the name Muhammad Imran with different getups.

PITB and Punjab police are constantly working to add features in CRI that will make this tool even more useful in future and criminals could identification will become more powerful and efficient.

Sindh Police have already started digitisation of their criminal records. Soon Sindh and Punjab police will be sharing the database of their criminals.

PITB implemented Criminal Record Management System (CRMS) and established an independent server for Sindh Police in order to record and identify criminals on the basis of their biometric details.

Over 50 thousand criminal cards have been digitised and registered into this newly established system.

Incase of adaptation of this technology by other provinces and the federal capital, the criminals could be identified from all over the country from any station. The use of CRI will help to reduce the crime rate in the entire country.