Goa police adopts IT to track criminals

Imagine a day when police constables will not be seen with their
conventio-nal lathis, but will sport hi-tech gadgets like PDAs and mobiles to
track and investigate crimi-nal activities. Imagine a day when we need not visit
a police station to lodge an FIR, but can register the same online sitting in
the comfort of our house and even know its status on the Net with the help of
username and password assigned to you after registering the complaint online.

This would be a reality very soon in Goa. Thanks to the gov-ernment’s
efforts to utilize IT to improve the image of the law-enforcing agency. Moves
are on to computerize all wings and functionalities of police in Goa. It aims at
connecting all the police stations and also other remote areas by using wireless
devises by a centrali-zed database management system.

Talking to CNS, a senior pol-ice officer of Goa police said, "Police
stations, traffic units, crime branch, administration and foreigners branch are
diffe-rent wings of police departm-ent, while prevention and dete-ction of crime
are the major functionalities. Our endeavor is to computerize all wings and all
functionalities of police department."

All the 24 police stations, seven sub-divisional police offi-ces,
headquarters and traffic cell will be connected by a cent-ralized database
management system. To make this possible, Goa police has embarked upon a major
software project at the cost of approximately Rs 1.5 crore. The software is
expected to be ready by the year-end after which, the government will go for the
procurement of the hardware. The cost of hard-ware will be to the tune of Rs one
crore and the System Requirement Study (SRS) for this Web-based project has been
done by C-DAC.

The software will be made compatible to the software used by National Crime
Record Bureau (NCRB), in order to communicate with its data-base. It is also
likely to be lin-ked to the Finger Print Bureau, State Transport Department,
prosecution and judiciary and also with other states for better co-ordination.

Writing of case diaries, com-munication between officers and other police
station work will be done online. Investiga-ting Officers (IO) will be given
handheld devices like PDA and mobile sets, which will be con-nected to the
network, to feed in various information on cri-mes in their respective areas.

"The real time nature of this system leaves little scope for
manipulations", said the sour-ces, while adding that this system can also
be useful to bring in transparency in the process of officers’ transfers based
on the detailed reports generated by the system about the performance of any
officer.

"It will also have positive impact on the cases heard by the court, as
it will improve the trustworthiness and credibility of police department in the
eyes of judiciary. Once the system is integrated with the judicial system, all
the case related data would be directly accessible to the judges decid-ing upon
the cases saving lot of delays and paperwork," opines the senior officer.

The system will also be lin-ked to the GIS system to enable plotting of
information on the maps to generate crucial crime patterns and distribution to
help take preventive measures. The data will be superimposed on the already
existing digiti-zed maps.

According to the sources, the registration of crime online will not be
possible immedia-tely, due to the identification issues, though the software
will contain this provision. Digital signature is the only way out to ensure the
identity of an individual wishing to file FIR online. "However, until
digital signatures are made fool proof, the feature of online registra-tion of
FIR will have to be disab-led," the official added.

Training efforts are on in the police department to familia-rize the rank and
file of police department with the compu-ters as well as with the new system.
Computer education is made mandatory for all the new recruits in the police
dep-artment. The success of this path breaking system will rest exclusively on
how the police personnel receive it.

Niraj Naik (CyberMedia News Service)