From high security solutions for the Scotland Yard and the London Metropolitan Police to criminal databases for the Detroit Police department, IT companies in Bangalore have been an outsourcing point for all. Ironically, the IT city has been slow in implementing technology to tackle crime and terror in the state.

Unlike the Detroit Police department, which built a computerised criminal database by using services of Tata Consultancy Services or the British Police units that outsourced backend work to companies that did not wish to be named, the Bangalore police itself are yet to build functional online databases.

As investigations into the July 25 Bangalore blasts are in progress, various police teams from across the state flipping through pages of old files for data.

Even the most basic information — identities of persons involved in terror-related offences, interrogation reports and recovery of explosives in the state — all are being fished out from paper files.

To add to it, there is no full-fledged anti-terrorism cell neither at the state level nor in Bangalore, forcing the state to create makeshift terrorism investigation teams. These teams comprise crime branch officers who normally probe organised crime or homicides.

Even the state-level ATC, comprising just two senior officers, often finds itself being shuffled between intelligence chiefs and the head of law and order.

This could be because traffic chaos has become a primary concern in Bangalore and some of the best police information technology solutions are for the traffic sector, which includes a Rs 300-crore monitoring system sanctioned under the mega cities project.

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