“It could turn out to be an effective tool of law enforcing agencies for verifying the identity of potential criminals and updating records of repeat offenders,” said Prateep V Philip, additional director general of police, Civil Supplies, CID, who has come up with the idea.

The police KYC is a concept that seeks to utilise tools like Friends of Police (FoP), social networking analysis and statistics. FoP is a key feedback mechanism and field verification tool for KYC for keeping tabs on criminals.

The idea is to arm the FoP contingent with details of criminals on a need-to-know basis, so that they would be able to look for actionable information on criminals. The KYC would be available for police personnel from the rank of constable to supervisory officers and the same could be shared with FoP members on a need-to-know basis.

According to Prateep Philip, KYC, a concept of proactive policing, incorporates criminal identification procedures, criminal information management policy, social networking analysis, monitoring activities and legal follow up. Social networking analysis in police parlance indicates the examination of the larger network that exists around the criminal, noted the senior IPS officer. It includes phone numbers used by the criminal and his/her family members, places of stay and hideouts, accomplices and their contact numbers besides the details of vehicles used by criminals and their gang members.