KARACHI: Police in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province have made their first ever arrest using facial recognition technology of a suspect wanted in multiple violent crimes through a network of surveillance cameras recently deployed in the port city of Karachi, a senior official said on Tuesday.
Karachi, a city of nearly 20 million people that is also the country’s commercial capital, has a history of street crime, gang violence relating to turf wars over illicit drug trade, kidnapping for ransom as well as sectarian and politically motivated targeted killings.
Police said the suspect, Abdul Azeem, was identified and apprehended through a facial recognition (FR) camera, part of the city’s expanding Safe City project, which aims to modernize law enforcement through the use of real-time surveillance and automated data analysis.
“This is the first case of its kind in which police, with the help of cameras, managed to apprehend a criminal about whom there was no prior information,” Asad Raza, a deputy inspector general of police in Karachi’s South district, told Arab News.
“Using technology, his identity was confirmed and the cameras identified him as the same criminal the police were searching for. Immediate action was taken and he was arrested.”
