Kerala police ranked first in the country in tracking offenders through the use of fingerprints, according to the 2020 report of the Central Finger Prints Bureau (CFPB). Last year Kerala was ranked second after Andhra Pradesh.
According to the CFPB report, the Kerala fingerprint bureau cracked 675 criminal cases followed by Karnataka with 517 and Andhra Pradesh came third with 412 cases. The report carried a special mention about the work carried out by the state fingerprint bureau and police in cracking the sensational snakebite murder in Kollam in south Kerala last year.
“It is an ample proof of the hard work of the state fingerprints bureau backed by technology leveraged effectively for crime prevention and detection. Officers of the bureau assisted by the AFIS (automated fingerprint identification system) software put up a stellar performance in becoming the first,” said state additional director general of police Manoj Abraham, an expert in cyber security.
The country has a Central Finger Print Bureau and every state has its bureaus which help in the investigation process by using fingerprint science. Fingerprint evidences are most scientific and foolproof, according to experts. The job of a fingerprint expert is to develop chance prints left by criminals at the crime scene and match them with the fingerprints in the database of convicts.
The report carried a special mention about the way police team cracked the sensational murder of 25-year-old Uthra in 2020. Initially it was dismissed as a mere snakebite case but police and parents got suspicious as this was the second snakebite that proved fatal. She received the fatal bite when she was undergoing treatment for the first bite.
Later police arrested her husband P Sooraj and a local snake handler who provided a cobra to him. During investigation it was found that Sooraj had bought a cobra from the snake handler after paying him ₹10,000. He also got necessary training from the handler. He reportedly took it to Uthra’s house in Anchal, where she had been undergoing treatment at her parents’ place since the first incident.
The police said that after Uthra fell asleep, Sooraj allegedly took out the snake from the bottle and threw it on her. He kept awake all night to ensure that it did not bite him. He left the room in the morning and started reading a newspaper in the verandah. Uthra’s mother found her daughter unconscious in the morning. She was rushed to a hospital where doctors said she died of snake bite. The case is on trial stage and police recreated the entire incident though digital and dummy presentation.
The cracking of theft in India’s first indigenously built aircraft carrier INS Vikrant two years ago also found mention in the report. The accused, two painters working in the ship, were arrested after matching their fingerprints taken at the time of employing them. The National Investigation Agency arrested them last year from north India.
