Digital police portal and crimil justice system

By Deepak Razdan

As crime continues to grow, and crimils turn tech-savvy, police investigators across States face a tough challenge to bring the law-breakers to justice. The situation is, however, undergoing a revolutiory change. The Digital Police Portal launched by the Government of India as part of the Crime and Crimil Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS), in August this year, will not only help police sleuths track the crimils fast, but also help the victims seek redress online.

The total IPC crimes in the country increased from 28.51 lakh in 2014 to 29.49 lakh 2015. According to the Union Home Ministry’s latest annual report (2016-17), the share of IPC crimes to total cognizable crimes in percentage terms was 37.2 per cent in 2011, and it increased to 40.3 per cent in 2015. The crime rate, which shows the number of crimes per one lakh population, too increased from 497.9 in 2012 to 581.8 in 2015.

In such a complex scerio, the Digital Police Portal, with its various features, is expected to be a game-changer. The CCTNS portal will provide investigators the complete record history of any crimil from anywhere across the country. Equipped with a Google-type Advance Search engine and ability to give alytical reports, the portal is expected to become the backbone of the country’s crimil justice system. For the State Police organisations and investigating agencies like the CBI, IB, ED and NIA, the Digital Police Portal provides a tiol Database of crime and crimils with facility for 11 searches and 44 reports. This will improve tiol security and revolutionise the way police works in the country.

To citizens, the Digital Police Portal offers online facility to register FIRs. The portal will turn crimil investigatio completely citizen-friendly affair.

In 2004, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) initiated a project med- Common Integrated Police Application (CIPA) as a component of the “Modernization of State Police Forces (MPF)” project, aiming at computerization of crime records in police stations on a stand-alone basis. The need for setting up of a tiol database of crime records was realized later, and the MHA introduced a Central sector project of Crime and Crimil Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) in 2009, with the objective of inter-linking all police Stations under a common application software for the purpose of investigation, policy making, data alytics, research and providing Citizen Services.

The project provided the State Police officials with a platform to enter Crime & Crimil data onto a CCTNS application, which could be accessed any time through State database at State Data Centre as well as at tiol Database at tiol Data Centre (NDC).

 At present, the CCTNS software is deployed at 14284 Police Stations out of the 15398 Police Stations covered under the scheme. A total of 13775 Police Stations out of 14284 Police Stations are using this software to enter FIRs 100 per cent. As many as 13439 Police Stations out of the 15398 Police Stations covered by the scheme are already connected and linked with State & tiol database of Crime and Crimil records.

The total number of FIRs registered using CCTNS leapt from less than 1.5 lakhs in March 2014 to about 1.25 crores before June, 2017, registering a jump of almost 100 times. Thirty-four States and UTs have launched their State Citizen Service portals with key services such as reporting a crime, request for verification, permission for events etc. Thirty-five out of 36 States and UTs are sharing data with tiol Crime and Crimil database. The system has seven crore records for crime and crimil data including 2.5 cr FIR records and legacy data.

The scope of the CCTNS project has been enhanced to integrate the Police data with other pillars of the crimil justice system mely — Courts, Prisons, Prosecution, Forensics and Fingerprints and juvenile homes, and accordingly a new system — “Inter-operable Crimil Justice System (ICJS)” has been developed. The ICJS system has been developed as a dashboard approach with an advance search facility for the purpose of retrieving the desired data from the system. The ICJS project is being monitored by a Working Group chaired by a Supreme Court judge, Justice Madan B Lokur.

State police organisations and all investigating agencies have been greatly empowered by the Digital Police Portal. The portal provides 11 searches and 44 reports based on CCTNS tiol database. The advanced search is equipped with high performing search and alytics engine. The advanced search can be carried out in two ways. In the first way of search, the search engine will look for full mes entered (for eg. me and Relative me) but will get all the records where one or both of these mes exist. In the second way of searching, it also fetches records with partial matches and returns all the results.

There are various kinds of filters available on the portal through which data can be sorted and rrowed down. Search can be carried out through Person me, Person and Relative me, Person and Act/Section, free text search and exact search on FIR Regd. Number/ Mobile Number/Email. The CCTNS portal will provide investigators the complete record history of any crimil from anywhere across the country.

Since the launch of the Digital Police Portal, citizens have begun registering complaints on the portal, and requests have been made for antecedent verification of persons. The Digital Police Portal is helping the Government in the efficient delivery of citizen-centric services in a friendly manner, which is an important responsibility of a modern welfare state today. (PIB)

(Deepak Razdan, is a senior jourlist. Views expressed in the article are author’s persol.)