Launching software to keep track of court cases

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Mumbai police crime branch will soon launch software called Court Case Monitoring System that will have data of all cases at trial stage in Mumbai and will send electronic reminders to the officers worried across the city about upcoming court appearances, depositions and other developments in the trial.

Officers said the move was aimed at better monitoring, or ‘pairavi’, of cases going on in court, which will further help improve the belief rate in the city.

The concept of pairavi officers, earlier used by agencies such as the CBI, was introduced in the Mumbai police in 2012, with pairavi officers being appointed at each police station.

The pairavi officer is responsible for protecting coordination between the public prosecutors and investigating officers of the case, making sure that summonses issued to witnesses have been received and that the witnesses concerned appears to depose in court on the appointed date and checking whether all paperwork for the case is up-to-date and in order.

On Thursday Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Atulchandra Kulkarni said on that the software would do the same job that pairavi officers were doing at present. “We already have a pairavi unit of 20 personnel and the same team will be pressed into service, entering the data into the software and managing it thereafter. We had approached the state government with the proposal and they accepted it,” said Kulkarni.

Kulkarni added that once operational, the software data of all cases which are being tried in all of the courts in Mumbai would be entered in the database, and it would then be updated with data about fresh cases as soon as a chargesheet was filed in a case.

“The software will then send out reminders about upcoming developments in the case to the officer as well as his superiors, directly to their cellphones,” Kulkarni said. The crime branch is expecting the funds to be released in 10 days and the software is expected to be operational in a month’s time, said officials. The conviction rate for Mumbai, which was as low as 31 per cent in 2013, touched 57.64 per cent in 2015 after the pairavi system was introduced.