Cabinet approves revamp of criminal tracking system

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on Wednesday approved the revamp of Crime and Criminals Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) and also decided to implement the Integrated Criminal Justice System (ICJS) through integration of CCTNS with e-courts.

The Rs.2,000-crore project would ensure quick data transfer among several wings of criminal justice system and development of a national database on crimes and criminals.

The CCEA, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the proposal put forth by the union home ministry.

"E-prisons, forensics and prosecution are the key components of criminal justice system. The project will ensure quick data transfer among different pillars of criminal justice system, which will not only enhance transparency but also reduce processing time," an official statement said.

"CCTNS will interconnect about 15,000 police stations and an additional 5,000 offices of supervisory police officers across the country and digitise data related to FIR registration, investigation and charge sheets in all police stations. It will lead to development of a national database of crimes and criminals," it added.

Police-citizen interface would undergo a major shift with the implementation of this project, as a number of services would be enabled through citizen portal.

The statement said the government had decided to fast-track CCTNS implementation by March 2017, including implementation of ICJS.

"Major new components of the revamped CCTNS project are ICJS, citizen portal having interfaces with various e-governance projects like Aadhaar, National Population Register, Vaahan Project of surface transport ministry, National Emergency Response System Project etc.," the statement added.

The project implementation would lead to a central citizen portal with linkages with state-level citizen portals to provide many citizen-friendly services.

These services include police verification for various purposes, reporting crime and online tracking of case progress, online reporting of grievances against police officials, accessing victim compensation fund and legal services etc.

The project would also enable publication of national-level crime analytics with increased frequency, as well as enable search for pan-India criminal/accused in regional language to further improve inter-state tracking of criminals.