BENGALURU: The City Police, following the Supreme Court’s (SC) recent order, has taken a giant leap towards digitisation. The SC recently made it mandatory to take videos of crime scenes in six cities, including Bengaluru. Following this, the police are now preparing a plan to introduce videography in criminal investigations for better analysis.
“Recently, the SC made videography of crime scenes mandatory in Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Delhi and Mumbai. Following this order, we are working out how we can improve our already-existing video recording methods in a crime scene,” said Alok Kumar, Additional Commissioner of Police.
The police are also in talks with the Gujarat Police, which has set up a central server that is connected to a specially-designed application called 'Mobile Pocket Cop'. This app can be downloaded on cellphones, which is provided to all police stations to use in investigations.
The pocket cop application covers all branches of every police station in Gujarat, including CID Crime, Anti-Corruption Bureau, Anti-Terrorist Squad and Crime Branch. It has been extremely useful to the police for crime detection, investigation and passport verification. Police officials there have been provided with a smartphone to operate the app for solving crimes by accessing and feeding relevant information into it.
“This app has reportedly made good progress, and the department has benefitted from this. We are expecting the app be shared with us too, or we could also develop a similar app,” said a senior police officer.
Every state will have a nodal officer who will oversee training of these videographers, and an expert team with officers from investigative agencies, including the Central Bureau of Investigation, National Investigation Agency and state police, along with a legal expert, will collect evidence as per guidelines. The same can then be produced in court during a trial.
The SC had reportedly said that digital photographs and videos should be recorded without delay, and must be shared across various police stations in real-time to facilitate faster, sharper investigations. The court had also pointed out that recording of crime scenes with hi-res photography will come in handy for forensic analysis. “It was accepted in the court that technology is the order of the day. This way, crucial evidence can be captured and presented in a credible manner.”
However, senior cops in the department say that to implement this in a full-fledged manner, they will need a minimum of six months. This time has been sought from the court. “We have submitted a report to the SC, stating that investigating agencies here are not fully equipped and prepared to use videography, and introducing this will take some time. But we are working towards achieving this,” said another officer.