Police officers have successfully used advanced technological tools to trace 12 missing persons in Belagavi district. They have reunited them with their families.

Teams of officers used advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, digital forensics and social media tracking to find these persons and connect them with their families. This has happened in the last few months.

Some of those traced thus were missing for years.

The police tracked the missing persons across multiple States. Some were found in Sangli, Raigad and Beed districts of neighbouring Maharashtra, while others were traced in Anand district of Gujarat and in Goa.

Some who separated from their families and settled down in districts like Bengaluru, Vijayapura and Bagalkot were also traced. All these 12 persons have been reunited with their families, after the completion of legal formalities.

Facial recognition software is used to compare photographs and identify individuals from available databases and CCTV footage.

An AI-powered age-progression image generator tool is being used to match old photos of missing persons with their current images or video grabs.

Officers also analyse social media activities of missing persons, their mobile phone usage, signal triangulation methods, email records, digital transactions and location-based data to establish movement patterns.

“Such data is used to supplement traditional investigation methods. Once it is confirmed that a missing person is residing in a different place, an officer from the jurisdictional police station travels to that town and works with the local police to find him and speak to him,” said a senior police officer.

Belagavi City Police also used such tools to trace the missing persons.

Superintendent of Police K. Ramarajan and Additional Superintendent of Police R.B. Basaragi supervised the “detect and reunite” operation.

A team led by Women’s Police Station Inspector Netravati B. Patil, technical staff Sachin Patil and Vinod Thakkannavar and others was involved.