HYDERABAD: The Telangana state police on Thursday began ‘Sakala Nerasth-ula Samagra Survey’ (comprehensive survey of all criminals), across the state. The survey is aimed not only at enumerating criminals but also geo-tagging them and their addresses.
Director-General of police M. Mahendar Reddy said there were about 2.11 lakh persons in the state with criminal records. Those involved in bodily offences, property offences, organised crimes, Maoist sympathisers and terror suspects were being enumerated.
“Our teams are going to their houses and doing a study of their living conditions, their occupation, source of livelihood and other details. The house locations are being geo-tagged to know the exact location and will be monitored,” he said.
Surveillance would be mounted aggressively on those who were continuing with criminal activities. “Those who have reformed themselves will be helped in easily merging with society and avenues for employment will be created for them,” he added.
Police officers, right from the lowest rank up to the DGP, would be visiting houses to enroll offenders with criminal history over the last 10 years. “The exercise would extend for a few more days depending on the number of offenders,” the DGP said.
The police launched a mobile application TSCOP to store details of a person involved in an offence, including photographs, fingerprints and specifics of their associates.
For those staying in other states, special police teams would leave for those places and conduct checks. The police would then hand over their criminal record files and fingerprints to the local police in other states.
Data collected would include photographs, fingerprints and other details of criminals and their associates with special focus on repeat offenders.
58,330 offenders surveyed on day one
The Sakala Nerasthula Samagra Survey (SNSS), an initiative by the Telangana police, began in the Cyberabad and Rachakonda commissionerates. The survey was conducted in 39 police stations under Cyberabad and 47 stations under Rachakonda commissionerates.
On the first day, details of 58,330 offenders were collected and uploaded in the database. Their residences are geo-tagged to trace them easily. The police is collecting the data of offenders arrested since 2008. Cops said that the details of offenders who have committed offences in their respective areas and residing within their area, Hyderabad City, other districts and states have been collected.
Nearly 657 teams are deployed in both commissionerates to conduct the survey.
More than 42,359 old offenders were geo-tagged in Cyberabad, including 21,803 in Hyderabad. Nearly 13,895 offenders belonged to other districts, while 6,662 were from other states in the country.
Meanwhile, around 15,000 old offenders had their residences geo-tagged in Rachakonda. All of them stay at different parts of the city. Other 970 offenders are from other districts and states, said officials.
