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...
INTERVIEW By Dheeraj Fartode Sense of pride of his 17-month tenure as Commissioner of Police is visible in the eyes of Shardaprasad Yadav when he says, “I have changed perception in people’s mind that police cannot not ‘touch’ criminals. This change in perception has led us to win the confidence of citizens and establish police-people connect.” This observation of the city’s top cop who is nearing the end of his tenure and is about to proceed on promotion to Mumbai, makes an altogether different sense in Nagpur’s special context. There were times when the city enjoyed a dubious distinction that top cops did not want to have even short tenures here, and perhaps for justifiable reasons, as some of them used to state. In the case of Shardaprasad Yadav, things have been altogether different. Despite his absence from the posting for personal reasons for s...