NEW DELHI: In a move aimed at curbing interstate crimes, the Centre has devised a mechanism whereby all police stations in the country will have access to a national database on crimes and criminals, and the system will be updated by different agencies to track the movement of criminals. Based on data generated by this multi-agency system, different security agencies will be able to generate alerts, sources in the Union Home Ministry said on Friday.
The feature will be part of the ministry’s ambitious project, Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS). A pan-India database on crime and criminals, CCTNS has started facilitating online services such as police verification for issuance of passport and hiring of a driver, tenant or domestic help, besides registration of complaints of car theft and others.
The deputy director in the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Prashun Gupta said, “The CCTNS is facilitating online services such as police verification for issuance of passport, hiring of driver, tenant and domestic help, besides registration of complaints of car theft, obtaining copy of FIR, status of FIR besides others.”
The CCTNS, conceptualised in 2009 by then Home Minister P Chidambaram in the wake of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, has been implemented in 14,710 police stations and 6,000 higher offices in the country. But the project is undergoing development to include more features. The `2,000-crore project has not been implemented in 894 police stations in Bihar and 51 police stations in the rest of the country so far due to technical problems, Gupta said. There are 15,640 police stations in the country.
The CCTNS database is accessible to Central Bureau of Investigation, Intelligence Bureau, Nation Investigation Agency, Enforcement Directorate and Narcotics Control Bureau. There are also plans for including the Railway Protection Force so that statistics pertaining to crimes committed on trains are also available on CCTNS, a senior ministry official said. The systems will also have digitised data related to FIR registration, investigation and charge sheets in all police stations.
The full implementation of the project with all the components will lead to a central citizen portal having linkages with state-level citizen portals that will provide a number of citizen-friendly services.