According to The Times of India, Tamil Nadu is set to become the first state in the country to accomplish the digitization of all case documents. The process is expected to be completed by October 2nd. System generated documents will become available for all police documents in courts till the time the chargesheet is filed.
As of now, the state has attained 100 per cent computerization of all registered FIRs.
Under the Common Integrated Police Record Updating System (CIPRUS), a criminal case will be divided into seven phases, each requiring a form. The first phase is registering an FIR and the last is the appeal. Following this process will also bring uniformity in documenting criminal cases in the entire country.
Officials told TOI that except for sensitive cases like rape and terrorist-related cases, officials and complainants can check the status of all the other cases from anywhere.
Moreover, all the police stations and special wings will be filing system generated documents for trial purposes. The two departments which will be exempt from this procedure are Vigilance and Anti-corruption.
This project is mainly being conducted by the National Informatics Centre and State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB). A trial run at the Form-5 level has been going on in Kancheepuram since August 18, 2016, and about 300 cases have been registered in the courts in the district, officials told TOI. The judicial officers have asked for a few minor changes which have since been implemented by the NIC.
Earlier, the Centre had allocated finances only for 1,482 police stations in the state to implement the digitization but later, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and the then Director General of Police, K Ramanujam, took efforts to modernize all the police stations and special wings. Rs 10 crores was allocated for the same from the state funds.
Currently, about 75 police station in Tamil Nadu do not have access to mobile or computer networks, so they cannot send digitized documents till a BSNL network is created in those places.