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...
Though the State’s conviction rate has been a cause of concern for the Government, Nagpur City Police’s record on this count has come as a breather for it. Compared to the conviction rate of 14 per cent for previous year, the City Police has registered conviction in 26 per cent in six months of current year. Conviction rate is number of cases per hundred in which court has held the accused guilty and awarded punishment. Maharashtra’s conviction rate has been a dismal single-digit for past some years. In 2012, it was 9.4 per cent only. This has prompted the State Government to initiate measures to increase conviction rate. In case of Nagpur city, the data with City Police reveals that conviction rate has registered an increase in first half of this year over the year 2012. Of a total 1,203 cases registered between January and June 2013, accused were convicted in 309 cases. In the year 2010, conviction rate for the city was only 5 per cent, which declined to 4 per cent in 20...