Continuing the series, we will explore ‘database’ checks in this post.
In the Indian context, database checks can have different interpretations depending upon the specific verification being done, but typically they refer to checking for adverse records in court judgements, criminal investigations, databases covering terrorists, most wanted criminals, members of parties and groups that are on watch list, among others. There are other specialized databases that claim to cover financial frauds and misconduct too.
So to a certain extent, there is an overlap between these database checks and the criminal checks (which we covered in the earlier post on criminal checks).
Challenges: The biggest challenge in this area is lack of any consolidated ‘official’ (government provided) database covering criminal records, terror suspects, most wanted criminals. While the currently available third party solutions have been created by aggregating information across a variety of sources, they still do not cover the entire spectrum of police stations and court records. This may only be possible once the Home Ministry sponsored Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCNTS) project becomes fully operational on 2012 and beyond.
Our recommendation: Select the database checks depending upon your company’s requirement. If you value criminal and terrorist checks, do consider the databases which cover criminal investigations, terrorists and membership lists of banned/watch-listed groups. If the specific role or the organizational domain requires financial due diligence, do subscribe to those database checks which cover financial frauds and misconduct.
