Pune City police operationalised ExTra on an experimental basis from Saturday. (Representational)
AS a spin-off of the geolocation-based phone app used for tracking home quarantined persons, Pune police have launched an app named ExTra for tracking and monitoring criminals externed from police limits.
The facial recognition and geolocation-based app ExTra (Externees monitoring and Tracking system) is a spin-off of the Home Quarantine Tracking System (HQTS) used initially by Pune police and all Maharashtra police units to monitor people asked to remain in home quarantine.
Pune City police operationalised ExTra on an experimental basis from Saturday.
The Maharashtra Police Act empowers a police officer of DCP or SP to extern a criminal from their jurisdiction if there is reasonable belief that the person can pose danger to law and order based on past record. The recommendation for externment is made at the police station level, followed by an inquiry by an ACP or DSP.
ExTra will be finetuned in the coming days as a tech-based solution to this problem, an officer said. An externed criminal has to do a one-time registration on a mobile phone. The police authority concerned then approves the registration, after which the externee is required to mark attendance through a selfie at an indicated or a surprise notification. The person’s selfie associated with geolocation and time of attendance is tracked through Artificial Intelligence algorithms. Real time alerts are raised if the uploaded selfie does not match the registered face or if the virtual geo-fence around Pune City is breached.
“Covid pandemic has made police take up many tech-based apps for various policing duties. Criminal surveillance is an integral part of police work. In view of this, an app was sought which could help monitor externed criminals through digital means. ExTra is a modified version of HQTS, implemented for tracking quarantined patients,” said DCP (Crime) Bachchan Singh.