In a bid to enlist the participation of the public in the crime detection process, the city police has decided to post photographs of notorious criminals and habitual offenders along with their profiles on its website.

The city has in recent times witnessed a surge in cases of chain snatching, burglaries, attack on elderly persons and women.

"We had taken up a campaign as part of an experiment with help of local media and other means of communication to increase awareness among people with regard to incident of chain snatching, fake policing and other crimes," Joint Commissioner of Police (JCP), Satish Sharma told PTI.

"During this 20-day campaign we observed that with increased level of awareness among people, the crime got detected faster," Sharma said.

He said that some of the fake policemen planted as part of the campaign were reported immediately by the people leading to faster response to crime.

Also there were number of incidents of reporting of suspicious behaviour in their neighbour by some people which resulted in detection of actual crimes, he added.

"Therefore, we are planning to increase the level of awareness among people as it would help detect crime faster.

For this we are planning to put photographs of all known criminals and repeat offenders along with their profile, on our website," Sharma said.

This would help people identify any criminals and alert the police in time, he said.

In a similar initiative, the city police was also considering to develop a system wherein any photograph of an offender caught in any locality could be sent to mobile phones of all police officers across the city in form of an MMS.