India needs real time decision support system to nab criminals: Chidambaram

PTI


Home Minister P. Chidambaram on Thursday advocated a robust real time decision support system to track down terrorists and organised criminals who have developed various channels of communication with the help of technology.

“The terrorists and organised criminals have developed overt and covert technologies including Information Communication Technology. This has made the job of law and order professionals far more challenging than ever before,” he said addressing the Silver Jubilee function of National Crime Record Bureau.

The Home Minister said the country needs solutions that can offer robust, real-time and validated decision support systems for the police leadership to evolve remedial and pro-active strategies.

“The sheer magnitude of crime in a federal polity of our geographical size makes this task a really challenging one,” he said.

Mr. Chidambaram said the challenges posed by criminality in general and other more serious manifestations of crime in particular like terrorism, insurgency, left wing extremism, trans-national crimes, drugs and arms trafficking, cyber crimes tend to establish that war against the Indian state is being fought more in the hinterland than on the borders.

“Today, we are fighting our battles on individual pitches. We need to connect, coordinate and supplement our efforts both at micro and macro levels,” he said.

Referring to the Home Ministry’s Rs 2,000 crore ambitious Crime, Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) project, the Home Minister said a conscious decision has been taken to mandate the NCRB to roll out the CCTNS.

“Through the CCTNS, we intend to create a national databank of crime and criminals and their biometric profiles,” he said.

This database will have a handshake with databases of 21 other agencies of the criminal justice system like courts, jails, immigration and passport authorities, and subsequently, be extended to other national agencies through the NATGRID so that terror and crime could be fought more professionally.

“It will also create a mechanism to provide public services like registration of online complaints, ascertaining the status of case registered at the police station, verification of persons etc,” he said.

Mr. Chidambaram, however, expressed disappointment over the initial delay in implementation of the CCTNS project. “If we remain firm, determined and have complete control, it is possible to limit the slippage in some stages“.

The Home Minister said though the initial easy tasks of the CCTNS project has been completed, the key works were yet to be done and hoped that the NCRB would be able to do it efficiently and in time.