Smart police station

As per the directives by Rajnath Singh, the Ministry of Home Affairs has decided to allocate specific funds for setting up of SMART police stations in each state shortly and will work towards the founding of more SMART police stations during the next financial year.

A concept of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, SMART police stations (S-Sensitive and Strict; M-Modern with mobility; A- Alert and Accountable; R- Reliable and Responsive; T- Trained and Techno-savvy) will seek to be also the primary point of interaction between citizens and the police.

Among the suggested features of a SMART police station are basic amenities for visitors, including a waiting area, toilets and drinking water; rest room for constables, including separate room for women constables; natural lighting and ventilation, CCTV, record room, communication room for wireless, computers, and so on; and automated kiosks for filing of complaints by the public

While the concept of SMART is certainly smart but is thinking on correct track? Most of components suggested are of a "model" police station rather than "smart". First as has been common with all indian schemes ( for schools, roads, tourism) its main focus seems to be hard infrastrucutre. Nothing wrong with it but what private firms call "non linear" growth should be the paradigm here.

A typical refrain one often hears is we are so and so number short of policemen. Basis? Data from developed nations. What is assumed here is that we have similar crime patterns, geogrpahical distribution of population & more importantly same efficiency of police forcce both on individual as well as unit level (i.e. police station) as developed nations which is not supported by any research whatsoever.

Sensitive & strict should mean that each complaint should be looked into;and people not shooed away & strict means once it is established that crime has taken place, police should be relentless in pursuing criminals & seeing to it that they meet justice. In USA it is not uncommon to hear about reversal of homicide or rape convictions done years ago after new forensic methods like DNA have come into vogue. In Indian police stations once the chargesheet is filed or culprits arrested very little attention is paid to witness protection or good upkeep of record.

Waiting room with basic amenities for visitors is good idea but what happens to their small complaints? Lets go back to Muzzafarnagar riots. Starting point was eve teasing of a girl who complained to her brothers about it who took matter in their hand. Why did the girl or her brothers did not feel that they should go to local police first? A sensitive police would mean first point of contact should be trained in listening to complainant.A transparent & time bound escalation mechanism where CO,SPP, DIG, IG are easily accesible using technology and not in "darbar" fashion which is in vogue nowadyas will ensure sensitive policing.
Often a poor person comes with little land where he has dispute with some neighbour or relative. Instead of washing hands by saying its civil matter, a sensitive police officer would connect him to free legal aid cell of district or probation officer so that he can initiate civil proceedings. Marital disputes likewise should be referred to NGOs working in the domain.A biweekly meeting of relevant functionaries of district & local administration with police will go in long way in making dispensation of justice sensitive than "marking" of complaints from one office to other

It is also necessary that an apparatus for prosecution is created parallel to police apparatus i.e. police station, circle, district & range level. As one of my seniors used to say to make sure a criminal meets his creator five links in criminal justice chain should remain intact i.e. complainant, witness, Investigating officer or IO, public prosecuotr & Judge. A criminal needs to manage just one of five elements i.e. either scare away witness, bribe any of above five, public prosecutor may lose interest with time or complainant go weary i.e. why each SMART police station should have a wing looking after prosecution.

M stands for Modern with mobility. It will be instructive to see fuel allocations for police station jeeps in North Indian states. An SHO is almost always expected to manage almost everything.A time and motion studies of activities being done at a Police station both in terms of man hours as well physical resources like fuel, stationery, power, bandwidth is must. Especially in rural area where distances are large & its not advisable to go alone or on two wheeler, an SHO has to come twice or thrice to district HQ for meetings. Sometimes SHO spends full day just to get a remand from court or submit some document. Why? Video confrencing is exclusive preserve of higher officials & conference call on telelphone or computer so common in multinational companies working across geographies are taboo in Indian babudom.
Mobility should not merely mean buying vehicles with higer horse power or RPM but it should also mean improving response time. After getting a complaint on phone or from control room how many minutes it takes to scramble the response team? How much time it takes to reach spot? Unless these KRAs are introduced we will end up buying vehicles & gadgets only.

A stands for alert & accountable. Right now YoY crime figures, time taken to investigate a case or chargesheet filed & no of cases succesfully traced are broad parameters on which Police brass is measured. Recently Delhi police went for free FIR & there is a famous "jalpaiguri" experiment in record books.It would be interesting to note roughly 1/3rd of FIRs today are registered on direction of court.Imagine a poor person from village has to hire a lawyer, go to a city court two-three times just to get a complaint registered!! This needs to be stopped.

Complainant can always be informed via sms of the progress of his/her case & similarly witnesses of date of their deposition. By suitable changes in law & taking judiciary on board statements of witnesses can be recorded even before filing of chargesheet as later they might turn hostile or it may be cumbersome for them to depose. Imagine a road accident on noida expressway or a theft in a train, a witness if assured that he/she will not be troubled after few months or years to go to that place & depose will be willing to tell what has transpired. As things are today there is no such assurance so finding a witness is biggest concern for police.
Accountable should also mean that how many chargesheets are resulting in conviction. This is crucial as this is dependent on quality of investigation, right procedure being followed, chain of custody being maintained, timely & correct fornesic tests being conducted. But a tortoise paced judicial system of India means that it is next to impossible to evaluate an officer on this parameter as many of cases investigated by him will not go to hearing itself for a year or two & final judgmenet may well take 5-6 years.

R stands for reliable & responsive. How many times one has called 100 number & found a busy tone. Do all control rooms have phones with caller ID so that they can call back if a caller is not able to contiue the call due to distress? Are ambulance avaialble at call or paramedics available at control room?Is it guaranteed that there will always be a doctor at hospital to treat a victim of accident or a magistrate to give custoady of minor offendor or expelled woman to right government instiutions.Is there incident registering & monitoring sytem where any transgression from ideal is being captured, documented & analysed periodically with corrective action being taken. This & especially availability of magistrate is a reason why hold out states (MP,UP & Bihar) should also adopt commissionarate system to improve responsiveness of system.

T stands for trained & tech savy.Have we defined like private sector minimum number of days each policeman/woman should undergo training every year? Whatever training constabulary receives is on initiative of a senior officer who may not be there always.Every few years there is no audit of future requirments of skill sets & training of current forces accordingly.This is not to suggest it does not happen but it is neither insitutionalised nor strucutured.

To sum it all after a long time we have a government which is not afraid to tread a new path.But are we sure we are treading a new path or just going in circles.
If SMART police station is only about hard infrastructure without process efficieny or business process reengineering it may not yield its full potential.
In passing it would be great if states resist temptation of setting up model PS in capital cities or urban areas.It would be wonderful if MP has SMART police station in Bhind or Murena, UP in Badayun or Tamilnadu in caste war infested Ramnad.

UP Police & Yogi

My wish list for UP Police from new government...
⦁ Very first step is enough police force, there are few steps for this
⦁ Regular recruitment of 3000-4000 constables every year, this makes sure they are trained properly & training capacity is sufficient for training
⦁ This also minimises chances of malfesance in recruitment which often happens in case of mass recruitment. Look at this for example
Around 22,500 police constables were recruited during 2004-2006 in the biggest ever recruitment drive for state forces during the previous Mulayam Singh Yadav regime. After the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government was voted to power in 2007, chief minister Mayawati ordered an inquiry into the recruitments following allegations of large scale irregularities in short listing of selected candidates. As a result, recruitment of more than 18,000 jawans of UPP and the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) and police radio department were cancelled.
The single-member inquiry committee of the then additional director general of police (ADG) SK Mishra appointed by the state government had found shocking instances of candidates being awarded grace marks for no rhyme and reason merely to help them qualify the written exam and rampant use of fake mark-sheets and certificates by candidates to meet the minimum requirement for recruitment. Not only this, it was found that the interview boards had cleared hundreds of candidates within hours time to the extent that each candidate spent only a few seconds to clear the interview - something which was practically impossible.
All the officers accused in this case have been since rehabilitated e.g. Sunil Gupta who is now IG. It is must that all such faulty recrutiments are cancelled. CBI inquiry in this even at this stage is must to root out corruption from public life and police.
It should be completely transparent as to how many constables are retirirng every year and how many are needed, at least for next 10 years this can be made online so that discretion of future governments is removed.
So called good officers from field should be made to opt for training centres for a posting of 2 yrs by paying 30% extra, right now training centres are place of dejected, discarded officers this should be reversed.
⦁ Castes & social groups which have very few representation in police should be encouraged to apply & interview boards sensitised to prefer them. Same thing for districts which have very less representation in police. It is very important to have a representative lower constabulary than one dominated by one caste group or district.
 From every serving personnel in police his caste, block of domicile should be asked & a matrix be made. Then prioity blocks identified which see most crime and/or are most poor. It should be a policy decision to award extra marks to candidates from these areas.
Once Police force is representative and is not dominated by yadavs or jats only , intelligence gathering of police will improve dramatically & crimes will reduce. A quota of 10% for muslims can also be thought of inside OBC quota, which will dent the Yadav dominance.
⦁ Training of constabulary in sof skills, cyber crime, forensic science is necessary via phase 2 , phase 3 training
⦁ For constabulary, random allocation of duties at district level should be introduced.
⦁ Tendency to provide gunner to people closed to ruling party should be curbed. even in small districts 60-80 constables are doing this duty while largest police station of district may not have that much force
⦁Young homeguards should be given a chance to appear in constable test with some relaxations, this will encourage them to do better.

UP is a large cadre with lots of officers. Officers from other states should be brought on deputation only in exceptional cases & not routine.
⦁ There is a premium posed on so called field postings. To obviate this for all officers, IPS, PCS & inspector rank a 10 yr plan should be made where numbers to spent in field postings, in HQ postings, In non field postings & in PAC are divided based on number of posts of each in total cadre. e.g. if out of 500 posts for IPS in UP, 70 are from PAC, 100 from HQ, 130 non field (intelligence, telecom, ATS etc) & 200 so called field , an officer can spend only (200/500) i.e. 40% of career in so called field posts (with relaxation of 10%).
⦁ This will reduce jockeying for posts & also make available good and motivated officers for hitherto neglected area of policing.
⦁ Promotion of state services officers is slow it should be speeded up but strictly only for those who maintain good reputation and are honest, not automatice promotion for everyone.
⦁ Even if central govt does not do, UP govt can on its own introduce post specific extra pay, where officers posted on high stress posts are paid extra so that any motive for corruption is nipped in bud.
⦁ Check DysPs, Inspectors and sub inspectors who have spent more than stipulated time in a district or range should be transferred
⦁ At least half of thanas should be headed by inspector level officers. THis is a rule which has been violated by impunity since many years. This is not good for morale of police & had rank and command issue when one of SIs becomes boss of his peers.
⦁ Border scheme should be rethought. It creates discontent among constables as they dont get leaves easily. New recruits can be posted in border districts & after 10 yrs if they want can be posted in home district as well but not in home circle. This will take care of stree prevalent among constabulary. But sub inspector & above, specially DySPs should be kept away from home as far as possible.
⦁ An index to measure effectiveness of district SPs need to be devised, which should not be traditional measure which promotes burking & non reporting rather efforst at preventing crime should also be rewarded. Victimisation survey of populace should be done regularly. Similar transparent objective index for SHOs can be devised. For this a committee of retired IPS, SPS & inspector level officers can be formed to be headed by some IPS from outside state.
⦁ A standard operating procedure in case of cross religion & cross community elopment cases should be followed & strictly implemented. Past cases of such violence should be opened one at a time at each police station and cuplrits identified and prosecuted.
⦁ Meat factories should be permitted in transparent way only & only on need based. Old ones should be regulated as per norms of pollution, no of animals killed, health , sanitation, labour safety. Many a times lower functionaries let such places have a free run by taking bribes , this should be severely curtailed
⦁ Vigilance, CBCID & Lokayukta should be strengthened. Many old cases are effectively lying in doldrums since years, they shoud be pursued vigorously. Distarict branches of vigilance should be strenghtened to stem local level corruption in PWD, education & health department. 
⦁ Forencsic labs should be strengthend. Lead time is currently 3-4 months, all efforts should be made to reduce it. Each circle should have a forensic van. Instead of mindlessly recruting more constables this will help police and crime detection more. Similarly trained sniffer dogs should be provided at every police station with handler.
⦁ For women safety, 1090 should be strengthended. Many districts had shakti mobile but not many SPs take interest in that, it should be revived. Female constables from districts should be sent on deputation to 1090. SPs should be given target that at 12 in night female students should feel free to roam out in city, then only real women safety has been achieved.
⦁ CCTV cameras after geo spatial mapping of crime should be deployed. Instead of each district police doing it independently, statewide some 1 lakh camera a year should be installed & made sure that they dont stop working after few months. Many district polie are buying gps & cammers independently and they are not functioning due to maintenance budget. For a year period remove all taxes on cctv cameras to encourge business to buy them, this will control theft to a large extent.
⦁ Mining policy especially for sand and minor minerals should be relooked into & reationalised by giving more lease proportional to demand - as its major source of corruption. Mining department is den of corruption. separate recrutiment for mmining, RTO & excise should be stopped and people from other govertnment departments like education, police, revenues, power who have clean record should be sent there on deputation.
⦁ Number of judges should be increased & testimony by video conferencing should be encouraged to fasten the speed with which cases are solved. THis is specially true for lower courts where state government has control. Further all lawyers who have cases against them should be reported to bar council to cancel license
⦁ Put end to armed dacoity in kithore of delhi highway or bulandshahar stretch close to delhi
⦁ Put end to e waste mafia in moradabad
⦁ Put end to vehic scrap industry in meerut and sambhal. It breeds mafia.
⦁ Strict action against all past cases of attacks on police
⦁ strict control of "nakal" mafia in board exams
⦁ Make 100 number strong, and respond to public grievances & SPs should be judged on effectiveness of 100 number rather than illusiory crime figures.
⦁ A separate sc/st thana in each district on the lines of mmahila thana to deal with cases of atrocities against SC
⦁ Since its a 3/4 majority, legislations can be made to increase punishment for currency counterfeiting
⦁ Strictly control and regulate construction of new religious places
⦁ Grant more lease of sand mining to kill the mafia and earn revenue
⦁ Taxation on liquor same as neighboutin states to prevent smuggling and liquor mafia
⦁ In towns of tourist & religious significance, like agra, mathura, benara,s lucknow, allahabad etc, tourism police should be formes. Tourist police station of Agra can serve as a model.
⦁ Control and regulate e rickshaw for traffic woes. In many towns they have become a menace. Political consideration or corruption should not allow unchecked proliferation of same.
⦁ Make govt hospitals, chc and phc responsive especially SOP in case of medico legal cases. Doctors who help people in getting false cases should be prosecuted severely.
⦁ Improve capacity of Jails, few can be outsources as well. Involve NGOs in a big way to improve them
⦁ Child homes are breeding ground of crime instead of reformation , need to be revamped thoroughly. If required involve private parties in manageing them or religious ngos
⦁ In SP offices some 10-15 cells are there and many people are stffed there e.g. DCRB has 5-8 people everywhere, there is osmmething called summon cell, SC/ST cell, women cell etc , all this should be rationalised and number fixed at lucknow for three categories of districts large, medium, small with power to IG to increase by 1 in case od requirement.
⦁ Many local people have been given police protection wich they dont need and also whcih means huge force is wasted in such fruitless efforts
⦁ Giving polie for codutcting exams should be stopped, private schools asked to hire their own security guards for same
⦁ Similarly organisers of various social , religious congregations should be asked to pay for police deploymment

Examiner of Electronic Evidence

Detailed article from this site

In a move to facilitate speedy prosecution of cybercrime and financial fraud cases, the government recently announced that it would appoint Examiner of Electronic Evidence (EEE) under section 79A of the IT Act 2000, to authenticate electronic evidences in the court. With the appointment of EEE, the government aims at eliminating the present hurdles in collecting, analyzing and proving digitalevidences in the court of law.

Since digital forensics is a crucial element in the cybercrime investigations, cyber security analysts expect that EEE will improve the present state of digital forensics mechanism in India. However, scarcity of manpower, lack of infrastructure and awareness are the major hurdles EEE will have to overcome for ensuring justice to victims.

Significance Of Digital Forensics

Every crime has some aspect of digital, which sometimes is a vital link in the investigation. With the growing sophistication of cybercrimes, the traditional methods of investigation are no longer helpful in prosecution. Digital forensics is specialized investigative science, where specialized cyber forensic investigators identify, acquire, maintain, analyse and report the digital evidences.

Digital evidence aids in cases such as online fraud, harassment, IP theft, ID theft, hacking, pornography, malware attacks and many more, where incriminating documents are likely to be found on the victim’s or the suspect’s computer. However, for electronic evidence to be legally admissible in court, investigators need to follow proper legal procedures in recovering and analysing data from computer systems.

“There are various aspects associated with digital forensics like network forensics, memory forensics, file system forensics, mobile forensics, operating system forensics, browser forensics, email analysis, log analysis, disk imaging, establishing timeline of occurrence of events, identifying indicators of compromise and many more which need to be carried out in order to find substantial evidences that can be presented in court of law”, said Rohit Goel, Information Security Analyst, Tata Consultancy Services.

State Of Digital Forensic Labs In India

Despite of an exponential growth in the cybercrimes, the current state of cybercrime investigation mechanism is in a vulnerable state in India. Government forensic labs are presently over-burdened and in spite of good round the clock work of staff; pendency is growing every passing day. Also, as technology advances, these labs need to be updated on a real time basis. On the other hand, there are few private labs established in India for Cyber forensics assisting activities, but they are not approved by the government and hence not contributing significantly in the mainstream activities. Since there is no approval from the government to these private labs, cyber experts and agencies mostly find it impracticable to invest in such labs.

Cybercrime is happening across India, however, presently only a few cities have proper cyber forensic labs to assist police machinery. This results in huge pendency of cybercrime investigations. Secondly shortage of funds is another major cause of concern for LEA’s. Therefore, cybercrime experts voice for cyber forensics labs not only in metros and cities, but in every district and town, where internet penetration is high and IT infrastructure is strong.

Challenges In Obtaining Digital Evidences

Though digital evidences form a major component in the cybercrime crimes, there are several obstacles in collecting the evidences and prove it in the court of law. The collection and analysis of massive data generated from multiple devices, is the biggest challenge in front of the investigation agencies. Encryption is another hurdle in terms of retrieving the information from encrypted devices. Today, organizations highly leverage cloud for data storage. In such scenario, an absence of a cooperation treaty between the two countries makes investigation difficult.

“The police often does faulty investigation or collect the evidence wrongly that creates loopholes. Private digital forensics without court prior permission also makes a very weak case. Secondly, digital evidence is volatile and storing digital evidence in courts is a challenge as it can become useless after 3-4 years”, said advocate Prashant Mali, President of Cyber Law Consulting.

Most significantly, the dearth of trained manpower and lack of awareness about digital evidences creates hurdles in the cybercrime investigations. “Lack of proper knowledge about collection of digital evidence is a major hindrance. Again, lack of training of LEA’s about 65B is very crucial and many times good investigation suffers on part of procedural lapses as mandated under section 65B. Use of the many freeware tools also hampers evidentiary value of the investigation”, said Advocate Mahendra Limaye, Cyber Legal Consultant.

Will EEE Speed Up Investigation?

Advocate Limaye believes that the collaboration between private and public agencies will serve the purpose of establishment of EEE in a much efficient way. “Electronic Evidence Examiner (EEE) will share the burden on existing set up and speed up the investigation procedure. But as per my knowledge government is looking only to those agencies which are from government sectors. Private players are again presently eliminated from this procedure. I firmly believe that we need a huge Private, Public Partnership in this movie”, Lima said.

The significance of Digital evidence in cybercrime investigation is immense. However, the potential of digital forensics is presently not appropriately understood by Law enforcement agencies. Goel said that EEE will independently verify the authenticity of the evidence and that will eliminate the loopholes in the process facilitating speedy and unbiased investigation.

“Due to the fragility and sensitivity of the electronic evidence, the police are currently requesting court for permission to send the electronic evidence to a forensic lab for expert opinion. The establishment of various EEE organizations would speed up the proceedings of the court as any of the legal entities can, not mandatory, approach these EEE directly at the investigation step, to verify the authenticity of the evidence and submit the evidence u/s 65B of Indian Evidence Act”, Goel said.  

Acknowledging the importance of digital forensics in cybercrime investigations, the government has taken a very crucial step to appoint EEE. However, it has taken almost 9 years for government to take a move after the IT Act was amended to mandate appointment of such examiners in 2008. The history says many crucial initiatives lies only on paper and does not reflect in actual implementation. Industry experts expect that considering the gravity of current cybercrime scenario in the country, the government should speed up the procedures and come up with viable mechanism for cybercrime investigations, which will encourage victims to report the crimes. 

relevant section of IT act reads like this

45A. Opinion of Examiner of Electronic Evidence.-When in a proceeding, the court has to form an opinion on any matter relating to any information transmitted or stored in any computer resource or any other electronic or digital form, the opinion of the Examiner of Electronic Evidence referred to in section 79A of the Information Technology Act, 2000(21 of 2000)., is a relevant fact. Explanation.--For the purposes of this section, an Examiner of Electronic Evidence shall be an expert.

link to  a pilot scheme of govt of India is here

section 79 A under which this is being done reads like this

criminal misuse of aadhar biometrics

as was feared by many, it has started

this article mentions it