Telangana: Online charge sheets in courts soon
Hyderabad: Very soon, the charge sheets in all cases dealt with by the Telangana police would be filed in the court, online. The process of linking the data pertaining to the courts and the police has already been given to the National Informatics Centre (NIC), and they are waiting it to be approved by a committee of Supreme Court judges. The traditional system of carrying bundles of papers of a case dairy, starting from a First Information Report, charge sheet, confession statements and a final report of the charge sheet to the court and submitting them for the trial of cases would slowly disappear with the new system.
The age-old system is consuming several thousands of man hours and is a big task for both the police and courts to preserve the documents for a longer period, even after the judgments. A senior officer from Telangana State Police said, “Fifty per cent of the process of linking the data pertaining to the judiciary and the police department is over. Further data linkage will be done within another three months. Once an approval from a committee of judges from the Supreme Court comes, the new system will be implemented.”
The officer said that the system is being funded by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the NIC will be maintaining it. “The investigating officer would have to upload the charge sheet into the software online. It can be viewed in the court by the concerned judge online. It will also help in saving the man hours and the data can be stored for a long time.” There is also another proposal in the pipeline for linking prisons data and the data with the police, as part of CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System) project, which will also be completed soon.