E-Paper
Web-tracker is the new scourge for criminals
A high percentage of an astounding rate of criminals’ conviction achieved in Bihar over the past six months is being credited to a police website, reports Rai Atul Krishna.
A Police website has emerged as a scourge for criminals in Bihar. A high percentage of an astounding rate of criminals’ conviction achieved by Bihar over the past six months is being credited to this site.
Its USP: keeping track of transfers and postings of investigating officers so that they can be located at the click of a mouse to furnish evidence during trial.
Points was inaugurated on October 14 last year by Justice G C Bhoruka, head of a committee overseeing the computerisation of the Indian judicial system—during a seminar on Speedy Criminal Justice. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Justice Aftab Alam of the Patna High Court had said at the meet that the IO database was critical for speedy delivery of criminal justice.
Top Bihar officials have confirmed that at least 30 per cent of 5,413 criminal convictions achieved by the public prosecutors during the October 2006-March 2007 period is to be attributed to the ready information provided by the Police Officer Information and Tracking System, popularly known by its acronym points.
“As the information on the whereabouts of the IOs is available on the net, the same is directly accessed by Superintendents of Police in various districts as and when an IO has to make a court appearance in connection with any case. In about one in every three cases, points comes to our aid,” says Additional Director General of Police (Headquarters) Abhayanand.
This, he explains, is a great movement forward from the situation in the pre-points days when trial and conviction in criminal cases were often delayed owing to problems in locating IOs for appearing as witness in the cases investigated by them.
“The success of points has motivated SPs to update the website on the IOs movement on a regular basis,” he adds.
“Before this tracking system came into being, locating IOs was a major headache for prosecutors who often found that the officer concerned had been transferred so many times during the long pendency of cases that nobody knew after a while their exact location,” observes Home Secretary Afzal Amanullah, who had co-ordinated the seminar.
“The easy location of IOs through the points web portal has been a major factor in the high conviction rate achieved by us over the past six months,” agrees Bihar Advocate General P K Shahi.
“The portal has registered 30,011 hits since it was created,” confirms Saurabh Gupta of the NIC, which has devised the ICT-based solution.
