Facial recognition tool helps Telangana Police reunite missing girl with family

Telangana Police’s face recognition tool ‘Darpan’ has reunited a seven-year-old missing girl with her parents after two years. The girl who went missing in January 2017 in Hyderabad was traced in Shahpur block of Madhya Pradesh’s Betul district through ‘Darpan’.

This was achieved by batch processing of photographs of missing persons in Telangana with persons found across the country, police said. After getting the match, state CID traced her to the Ebenzer Education Society, an NGO.

The CID team informed the girl’s parents and they rushed to Betul, where the girl was united with the family.

It was on January 4, 2017 that the missing case was registered at Bahadurpura police station in the old city of Hyderabad. It was later transferred to CID and its Women Protection Cell was investigating the case.

“This is the 18th case in which Darpan has united a missing person with his/her family through remotely processing images available in the public domain. This is an example of how artificial intelligence can be used to make things possible,” said Additional Director General, CID, Govind Singh.

Last week, a 14-year-old mentally unsound boy, who went missing from his house in Madhya Pradesh was traced in Bengaluru by ‘Darpan’. The boy was handed over to his family.

Salman Shaik, a resident of Chiman Ganj Mandi police station limits in Ujjain, had left his house in June last. The boy was traced to Government Balak Ashram, Hossur Road in Bengaluru.