Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
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 then writes a request letter to the bank to get account details. When the bank sends the data, the tool reviews the transactions, identifies anything suspicious and gives a summary to the police officer,” said ASP Agrawal.
The Nagpur Rural Police, whose SP Dr Harssh Poddar is the officiating Director of MARVEL, have already started using these tools. At each police station, one Police Sub-Inspector and one head constable have been trained to operate this new technology.
Officials believe that tools like Crime-OS will change the way police work. With faster, smarter systems, officers can focus more on action and less on paperwork. This is just the beginning of a new era in smart policing, said ASP Agrawal.
One Project, Many Smart Tools
MARVEL is a government-owned special purpose vehicle (SPV) and is not limited to just one tool. Along with Crime-OS, the team has developed several other smart policing tools:
Facial Recognition: This tool scans video footage to find and match faces. Officers can use it in real time to identify suspects or missing people.
Object Detection: This system can detect over 600 types of items, including dangerous weapons. If someone appears in a video carrying such an object, the tool alerts the police right away.
Number Plate & Document Reading (OCR): These tools automatically read vehicle number plates and written documents and save time on manual work.
Telecommunication Chatbot: During investigations, police often need to study call records and mobile tower data. This AI chatbot can quickly scan and sort through Call Detail Records (CDR), mobile tower dumps, and Internet Protocol Detail Records (IPDR) - work that usually takes hours.
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