Telangana to go for Centre's tracking system

Hyderabad: The Telangana prisons’ department is all set to implement the Centre’s Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and System (CCTNS). The state will soon start uploading data about all prisoners.

The CCTNS phase-1 began in Telangana in 100 police stations in 2015, and it is being extended to courts and prisons. Prisons’ director general Vinoy Kumar Singh told DC that they have installed a comprehensive management software before implementing CCTNS.

“The National Informatics System is now integrating our software with CCTNS for uploading the databases available with the TS prisons’ department,” he said.

The prisons’ department maintains data about all prisoners including their history, cases, charges, severity of cases, categories of cases like murder, rape, crime against women, burglary etc. The cases with the police, courts and forensic departments will be merged into the database of CCTNS.

A senior police official said that CCTNS would help police forces to access the history of a criminal. “Before this it was very difficult to obtain information about a particular criminal from the police station in his/her hometown. Once CCTNS starts functioning fully it will be possible to search for a criminal/suspect in the national database,” the official said.

Meanwhile, the TS prisons’ department is seeding the Aadhaar details of prisoners with their records. An official said, “We are taking the initiative to provide Aadhaar cards to all prisoners. Most prisoners (98 per cent) in TS jails have Aadhaar. The remaining two per cent are new inmates.”

Prisoners can now check their records
The inmates of Telangana prisons who now depend on officials to check the status of their paroles, furlo, meets and telephone facility, can soon access all these information using their thumb impression at a kiosk.

The prisons department has procured seven such machines for the three central prisons (Cherla-pally, Chanchalguda and Warangal), the women’s prison in Chanchalguda and three other district jails. Telangana prisons director general Vinoy Kumar Singh said that each kiosk costs '40 lakh.

“The biometric details of prisoners will help them to check their history like used and balance available phone calls, parole, furlo, meets, marks for good conduct, balance savings with the prisons department etc,” he said.

Mr Singh said the same machines would be installed in other prisons in the state in phases. “Some district prisons are not required to have such a system as they have less inmates. Khammam jail has only 100 prisoners and the same situation can be seen at Sangareddy, Nizamabad and Karimnagar jails. The staff can assist prisoners in providing information. We are concentrating on prisons with more inmates,” he said.