About 1,600 police stations in Andhra Pradesh will soon be equipped with 'live' scanners and four-finger print scanners as part of the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and System (CCTNS) project, that integrates the Finger Print Bureau (FPB) in the state with the police infrastructure for effective tracking of criminal records.

CCTNS is an e-governance initiative of the union home ministry and aims to create a comprehensive and integrated system for effective and efficient policing through a nationwide network with a bottom-to-top approach.

However, lack of trained and exclusive manpower seems to have hampering the plans of the Andhra Pradesh-FPB which has sought towards earmarking separate manpower to the Bureau in order to get better results.

As part of the second phase of implementation of the CCTNS project, live scanners and four-finger print scanners will be provided to around 1,600 police stations in the state, AP FPB director T Rajendra Prasad said.

"Fingerprint is one of the priority areas of the CCTNS project. It creates a platform for sharing crime and criminal information and Finger Print Data across the country in real time," he said.

For the success of CCTNS, the finger print data along with textual and demographic data has to be supplied from the police station level to the Automated Finger Prints Identification System (AFIS) at district, state and national level. But, at present the police personnel at police station level are over-burdened with other tasks including maintaining law and order bandobast and similar other duties, Prasad said.

If separate police force is deputed for the purpose then the clarity and correctness of the data input will improve which in turn will help in the identification and speedy detection of cases and also integration of data through finger prints, Prasad explained.

"The idea is whenever a crime takes place or a person is arrested or detained on suspicion charges, a police personnel can immediately send in a query after taking finger prints with the live scanners and upload the same through intranet link-up and send it to FPB and based on the results the inspector concerned can decide on arresting the person or to let him/her out," he added.

Prasad said towards empowering the FPB, he had made suggestions towards deputing two police constables at each police station level, one sub-inspector at circle level, one inspector at sub-divisional and one DSP at district-level for qualitative and successful implementation of improved investigation and crime prevention.

Also, this force will form as a separate unit and work under the head of state FPB. The matter will be soon discussed with the state DGP and later sent to the government for its approval, the FPB director said.

The CCTNS project is being implemented all over the country with the goals to facilitate collection, storage, retrieval, analysis, transfer and sharing of data and information at the police station and between the police stations and the state headquarters and central police organisations.