Prosecution witnesses getting summons served at the eleventh hour to appear in courts to depose in criminal cases will soon be a thing of the past. As part of the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS), the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has developed a software, in association with the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB), that will enable serving of summons to prosecution witnesses on their mobile phones by way of Short Messaging Service (SMS).
Additional Director-General of Police/Director, SCRB, Seema Agarwal told The Hindu on Sunday that the first-of-its-kind project would soon be launched though the practice of serving summons physically would continue.
Pointing out that serving summons via SMS may not be legally binding on the witnesses, she said the facility was only an advance intimation both to the Investigation Officer and the prosecution witnesses.
Explaining how the SMS would be generated, Ms. Agarwal said once details of summons were entered into the CCTNS at the police-station level, the system would start sending the summons (in Tamil) to the mobile phones of the Investigation Officers and prosecution witnesses.
The serving of summons in person by the police would follow.
The police headquarters has also sent a note to all Commissionerates/districts to impart training to police officials in different ranks on the new system that is ready for launch now. The police would update the registered mobile phone numbers of witnesses in all cases.
