Thaindian News

Dhaka, Dec 16 (IANS) The Bangladesh government is working on a highly-sophisticated criminal database, the first of its kind in the country, that will recognise 150 particulars of a criminal and help law enforcers deal with offences.

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) began implementing the 2.5 crore taka project in June 2010 in cooperation with local software firm Tiger IT Bangladesh Ltd, the Daily Star reported.

“As many as 150 particulars of a criminal, including photograph, prints of 10 fingers, images of retinas, blood group and available previous criminal records are being stored in the database,” said Lt. Col. Ziaul Ahsan, chief of the RAB intelligence wing.

He said the database would soon be available on website, “but its access will be restricted”.

It would be shared with other law enforcing agencies too.

“We have so far incorporated the particulars of around one lakh criminals arrested by the RAB since its inception in 2004, to the new database,” Ahsan said.

The project would, however, need to record the latest particulars of inmates in at least 67 jails in the country.

Following the arrest of a person, law enforcers now would be able to know when, where and why the person was arrested earlier — if at all arrested earlier.

Once launched, it would prevent arrested criminals, pretending to be innocent, from deceiving the law enforcers, he said.

Criminals, especially militants, use fake names and addresses, making the task for law enforcers — to arrest and identify them — very difficult.

“Here, the database would work as a deterrent to the criminals,” he said.

Earlier, the RAB only kept fingerprints of arrested criminals.

A total of 200 RAB personnel have been trained to gather the data.