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AI Joins the Force: Maharashtra Police Deploys ‘Crime-OS’ for Smarter Investigations

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By Dheeraj Fartode  Imagine a police officer uploads an FIR and within seconds, an AI assistant begins planning the investigation. It write official letters, scan bank data and spot suspicious transactions. It sounds like science fiction - but it’s now reality in Maharashtra. The state police have started using Crime-OS, a powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool developed under the MARVEL project (Maharashtra Research and Vigilance for Enhanced Law Enforcement). This tool, built in partnership with the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Nagpur, works like the co-pilot feature in Microsoft Office - but to solve crimes. It helps police save valuable time and reduces the heavy workload of investigations. Assistant Superitendent of Police (ASP) Deepak Agrawal explained that police investigations usually take a lot of time and effort. Crime-OS is designed to ease that burden. “For example, if a fraud case FIR is uploaded, the tool automatically picks out important information. It t...
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EoW raids L7 group’s Mumbai Office

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By Dheeraj Fartode

Economic Offences Wing (EoW) of City Police and Mumbai Police conducted raid at L7 group office at Marol, Andheri (East), Mumbai. The cops seized computers, laptops, hard disks from the office related to the Dabba trading network which has caused losses to the State exchequer. 
Joint Commissioner of Police (Joint CP) Rajvardhan confirmed the information and said that the raids were conducted on specific inputs. 
The raid started on Friday when the EoW got tip-off about Ravi Agrawal’s software office in Mumbai. The Nagpur EoW contacted Mumbai Police for help and started the raid that continued for 24 hours. The cops have also engaged software professionals to collect maximum evidence from Mumbai office of L7 group. 
Sources in EoW informed ‘The Hitavada’ that the Mumbai-based office is the most important link in the Dabba trading network. Agrawal had established the office at 5b-157 Akshay Mittal Industrial Estate, Marol, Saki Naka, Andheri (E). He had installed servers there from which he was operating computers of Nagpur. 
Ravi Agrawal had used intelligent softwares to operate computers installed in Nagpur office. The computers can be started from Mumbai office only and all data saved in Mumbai based-servers can be accessed from any location. Many computers seized from Nagpur office were found to have no hard disks but they were found to have many extensions connected to the servers. 
EoW officials said that Ravi Agrawal was running the Dabba trading in his offices under the garb of a software company. When the investigators asked the Agrawal family about the reason for installing 20 computers, the family members claimed that they were software developers. However, they did not show any software engineer as their employee nor any software development programme. 
The L7 group also failed to show computer logs in the last seven days as the computers were used only for Dabba trading. The EoW has  deputed many software engineers to collect the information from hard disk and also retrieve the deleted data.

Why was L7 virtually controlling computers? 

After amassing huge wealth from fraud Dabba trading, Ravi Agrawal had modified his entire computer network, sources insist. He had connected his office computers through Virtual Network Computing (VNC) server installed at Mumbai office. The VNC protocol remotely controls another computer over a network. Agrawal had used the VNC so that no one could access his logs of Dabba trading. This type of setting of computers and softwares was not available with any other Dabba traders.
The remote server is the main electronic evidence in the case under various Sections of Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act to punish the accused. That is the reason why the EoW is working hard on it so that the accused could be prosecuted successfully. 

EoW chasing absconding Dabba traders 

After arresting 10 Dabba traders, the Economic Offences Wing (EoW) is chasing another 11 absconding Dabba traders. Ravi Omprakash Agrawal, Propritor of L7 group, is reportedly hiding in a foreign country and cops are preparing to get hold of him, the kingpin of Dabba trading in Central India. 
The absconding accused are identified as kingpin Ravi Omprakash Agrawal, propritor of L7 group; Dinesh Bhanwarlal Sarda, a resident of Canal Road, Ramdaspeth, Nagpur; Vina Ghanshyam Sarda (51), a resident of Shivaji Nagar, Nagpur; Uttam alias Gopi Dwarkaprasad Malu, a resident of Hiwri Nagar, Nagpur; Kanhaiyya alias Kanni Ramchandra Thawrani; Sachin Thakurlal Agrawal (37), a resident of Satnami Nagar, Nagpur; Dinesh Chandulal Goklani, a resident of plot no 166/2, Dewani Niwas, Queta colony, Nagpur; Vinay Shriprakash Agrawal (31), a resident of Elements Apartment, Surya Nagar, Nagpur; Ankit Omprakash Malu (25),a  resident of Wathoda,  Nandanvan, Nagpur;  Ashish Mukund Bajaj (37), a resident of Hiwri Nagar, Nagpur and Abhishek Mukund Bajaj (34), a  resident of Hiwri Nagar; Lakadganj, Nagpur. 
The cops have arrested Ramesh Chotelal Patre (33), a  resident of 101, Vaishali Nagar, Nagpur; Govind Bhanwarlal Sarda (42), a resident of Canal Road, Ramdaspeth, Nagpur; Kushal Kishor Laddhadh (37), a resident of Ramdaspeth, Nagpur; Pritesh Sureshkumar Lakhotia (37), a resident of 201, Shankar Nagar, Nagpur; Ashwin Madhukar Borikar (30), a resident of Durgawati Nagar, Nagpur; Vikas Laxminarayan Kubde (28), a  resident of Pachpaoli, Nagpur; Swapnil Vijayrao Parate (24), a resident of Shivaji Nagar, Nagpur;  Vijay Chandulal Goklani (34), a resident of Queta Colony, Nagpur; Niraj Omprakash Agrawal,  brother of kingpin Ravi Agrawal and Nimit Kirit Mehta. 
Meanwhile, the EoW is working hard on building an impeccable body of evidence against the accused so that they will get their extended custody. The EoW sleuths are in constant touch with Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to prepare a flawless documentation for the case.
All teams of Crime Branch including detection teams are also working hard on the Dabba trading case as this is considered to be the biggest achievement of Nagpur Police in the current year.

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