Pune: Maharashtra’s first dedicated Portrait cell set up at CID headquarters

CID portrait
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Pune, July 18, 2020: A perfect sketch of the crime suspect’s face is a key element that boosts the crime investigation by police. It has often helped the police department crackdown on the crime accused efficiently. Recognizing this fact, the Crime Investigation Department (CID) has set up first of its kind ‘Portrait Building section’.

The department has started a five-day sketch course programme for police personnel who have the knack of drawing/sketching to enable them to nab the accused.

Additional Director General of Police and head of the CID, Maharashtra State Atulchandra Kulkarni had proposed the idea of establishing a specialised wing called Portrait Building section to the state government last year. Maharashtra Police Director General of Police (DGP) Subodh Kumar Jaiswal inaugurated the first portrait department of India at the state CID headquarters, located near Pune University chowk on Pashan road, on July 6.

DGP Jaiswal said, “The department should aim to provide training to as many as possible officers in every district, which will ultimately result in availability of at least five trained police personnel in every district crime branch unit. The aim is to train around 40-50 sketch artists in the state. For which, we will ensure that the sketch department is well-equipped with all required modern technology. The purpose of this course is to train the officers for developing sketches that can be used in the investigation.”

CID Chief Kulkarni said, “About 40-50 Policemen have shown their willingness to undergo this training in Portrait drawing.  In the backdrop of Covid-19 situation, a five day basic training course for ten trainees has been organized.  Making available trained men to draw Portraits of Criminals in the state is the motive behind this training.  Identifying Criminals would be a great challenge in future and this specialized section imparting training on drawing such Portraits would be of great importance with relevance.”

 

For the inaugural function Pravin Salunke, Spl. Inspector General of Police (Crime-West) CID, FK Patil, Spl. Inspector General of Police, (Crime-East) CID, Dr Jalinder Supekar, Deputy Inspector General of Police EOW CID,  Rakesh Kalasagar, Superintendent of Police (Technical Services) CID and other officers of CID were present. Anuja Deshmane, Dy. Supdt. Of Police CID, gave the introductory speech about the programme.

 

How will this help in the investigation?

CID in its official statement stated that the nature of crime is changing every single day. Considering the present scenario, technology has become easily available and accessible to the criminals in committing the crime.  Drawing a portrait of an accused absconding since 10-15 years, imagining his or her present condition, identify accused absconding after committing the crime, identify unknown and decomposed body, identifying suspect found in CCTV with blur footage with the use of portrait and making his statue if needed are the difficult tasks which poses major challenge in police investigation. Therefore, making a portrait of an accused with the available description and the description provided by the witnesses is an important factor in police investigation of crime.

About the course

Professor Girish Charwad who has completed first of its kind PhD in the field of Portrait Drawing in Crime Investigation will conduct the training sessions. The state CID is trying to rope in more universities for the same.

Course contents would be on the basis of contribution and study conducted by Charwad.  Drawing a portrait on the basis of available description is a very challenging task, and with the help of Charwad’s portraits, the police were successful in arresting criminals involved offences like murder, kidnapping, robbery, dacoity, rape and others. They were convicted with punishments like hanging to death and life imprisonment. The judiciary court has also accepted the portrait as important evidence.

Trainees upon completing this training successfully would be given a certificate by Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU). Soon a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) would be signed among the officials. Similarly, discussions were also held with Bharti Vidyapeeth Deemed to be University. Even Vishwakarma University has consented for inclusion of Virtual Reality Technique and MOUs with both these universities will also be signed.