Geo-tagging goes awry as 30 per cent Telangana thugs live outside

Hyderabad: The geo-tagging initiative of the Telangana police of all the criminals may not be a fool-proof exercise. About 30 per cent of the criminals involved lived in other states and even abroad.

Police teams would visit their households and geo-tag them based on their location. The location would be fed into a police network and checked whenever the need arises. The exercise was earlier done in Hyderabad city and was now being expanded to all districts.

“Whenever a police team visits a locality, they would know the houses of criminals or their operational hideouts. This would help keep a tab of them,” senior officials of TS police officials said. Physical verification of offenders in the addresses would be done regularly to keep a watch on their activities.

In Hyderabad, geo-tagging of houses of criminals was done on a pilot basis. Cops found that those involved in ‘unplanned offences’ could be located at home, but not other criminals. “Professional property offenders, history sheeters, land grabbers, brothel organisers and human traffickers shifted their residences often,” said a city police official.

“It is difficult to go to other states and geo-tag criminals as it involves a lot of procedures and official interactions. In such scenario, we are handing over a list of criminals of other states to the respective police and to embassies for those from other countries,” said Cyberabad DCP, Janaki Sharmila.