LAHORE: The Punjab police have decided to procure 70 palm scanners and mega matcher software at a cost of Rs450 million in order to replace the 150-year-old traditional investigation system.

These modern gadgets were being used by the developed countries to get rid of a ‘paper record’ for about a decade, a police official told Dawn.

Being introduced for the first time in Pakistan, the technology will have the capacity to save at least two million data and can match evidence within 10 seconds, he said.

“With the introduction of these gadgets, the Punjab police will have the biggest crime data bank in the country,” the police official claimed. One palm scanner costs Rs500,000”, he said.

He said a meeting chaired by Inspector General of Police Punjab Mushtaq Ahmad Sukhera on Monday gave a final nod to the procurement of technology.

The meeting was informed that the technology would help in collecting evidence, finger prints and sketches from the crime scene within no time.

And for good measures the Crime Record Office (CRO) desks are also being established at all central jails in Punjab where the palm scanners will be provided to save the record of criminals.

CRO’s Lahore SSP Umer Salamat told the meeting that at least 500,000 crime data across the province had been computerized and among these the process of scanning of as many as 350,000 cards had also been completed.

He said the Punjab investigation department had traced 12 most important hardened criminal cases with the help of this system during the last four months.

The IGP said the Punjab police department, with the assistance of the mega matcher system, would have the biggest criminal data bank through which sketches of criminals, data analysis and predictive intelligence system would be improved.

Through this system, the Punjab police would enter into ‘paperless’ policing by abolishing the 1861 traditional investigation system, the IGP said.

The meeting also decided to set up a monitoring room which would be headed by an AIG rank officer and would be responsible for consecutive monitoring of all front desks, transfers/postings and the CRO system.

Additional IGP Operations/Investigations retired Captain Arif Nawaz, DIG Information Technology Shahid Hanif, DIG Operations Amir Zulfiqar, DIG Lahore Operations Dr Haider Ashraf and other senior police officers were also present.

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2016