23 lakh portraits enter facial recognition database of Karnataka police

BENGALURU: Five sandalwood smugglers were arrested and125kg of sandalwood logs recovered from them recently, a month after police received a complaint that the gang had cut a tree and fled with it from the Air Force Station in Jalahalli on August 8.
Working on minimum clues and evidence, including pictures of the suspects, a team of 20 personnel from Gangammanagudi police found out after the arrests that three of the suspects had been convicted in the past for cutting sandalwood trees.
“If we could have used the state police’s face recognition technology, which was inaugurated by the chief minister on September 6, the three convicts could have been identified immediately and our month-long investigation would have ended in a week,” an officer said.
As many as 23 lakh portraits of people with criminal records, those declared missing and unidentified dead bodies have been entered into the ‘Facial Recognition’ database of the state police. On feeding the picture of a suspect, the software matches it with that of 23 lakh portraits and identifies the one which has resemblance.
“If exact comparison becomes difficult, the system will give pictures and details of three nearest matching faces,” an officer said.
The database of pictures of missing persons is expected to help cops in tracing them quickly. “We have provided access to police staff at railway stations, bus terminals and airports of the state. If cops suspect someone is a missing person, they can click his or her picture and match it with the data,” police said.
E-lost app extended to other districts
The services of ‘E-lost app’, an online portal, for filing complaints about loss of documents and things like mobile phones and which was operative in Bengaluru city, has been extended to other parts of the state for a couple of months now. The app provides for lodging complaints and getting acknowledgements for follow-up action like replacement of sim cards.
Till now, 45, 527 complaints on the E-lost app have been received from all over the state, shows data from Karnataka Police. Bengaluru tops the chart with 31,559 complaints filed this year, followed by Hassan (3,416), Shivamogga (1,568), Davanagere (1,203) and Gadag (1,167). The least number of complaints was filed in Udupi (27).
The app was introduced by then city police commissioner NS Megharik in July 2016. Between July 2016 and 2020, the portal had received a little more than nine lakh complaints in Bengaluru alone.