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: Published on 26-May-2019 THE ambitious Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS) is bearing fruits for the Maharashtra Police as all the First Investigation Reports (FIRs) are being registered on-line by the cops. Union and State governments combine have spent Rs 11,569.86 crore for the project in Maharashtra alone and a total of 21,09,585 FIRs have been registered on-line in the State since the launching of CCTNS in September 2015. National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) has recently issued a CCTNS progress report and highlighted Maharashtra for 100 per cent connectivity of CCTNS in the police stations along with 17 states out of 35 states and union territories. However, technical set-up for the CCTNS is 93 per cent in Maharashtra. The CCTNS facilitates the process of filing complaints and follow-up, which is available at the click of a mouse. In the year 2015, State police registered 4,23,265 FIRs, followed by 5,09,3...