Though the Crime and Criminal Tracking Networking (CCTN) system is yet to be fully rolled out in the State, the Dakshina Kannada police are going ahead with a mix of IT-based documentation and manual work, said Superintendent of Police S.D. Sharanappa.
He told a meet-the-press programme organised by Dakshina Kannada District Working Journalists’ Union here on Tuesday that they were anyway moving towards paperless policing, an initiative from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
The IT initiative would enable paperless police documentation, right from filing the first information report (FIR), to investigation as well as filing of charge sheet before the court, is entirely done online.
Mr. Sharanappa said the DK police have started with online filing of FIRs before completely switching over to CCTN. The online process would facilitate higher officials to monitor the progress of cases as well as to guide the investigating officers, he said.
CCTN, Mr. Sharanappa said, would ultimately facilitate speedy dispensation of justice. With the judiciary and the prisons department proposed to be brought under CCTN, police would be able to electronically transmit FIRs and other documents to jurisdictional courts. At the same time, court documents could reach the prisons department electronically thereby eliminating delay in the process, the SP said.
Besides ensuring transparency in administration of criminal justice, CCTN would substantially reduce man-hours spent on doing routine works.
Responding to a question on e-beat, Mr. Sharanappa said the six-year-old project has been working well in urban areas of the district. As many as 125 tags and 10 readers have been given to each police station.
Places where the tags have to be fixed, have been chosen on the history of each locality, including sensitivity and previous law and order situation. The e-beat would ensure that the beat policeman performs the duty without fail and eliminate any suspicion under the present manual point-book system.
