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...
With an aim to rigorously implement special drive against errant riders, City Traffic Police has adopted a new mechanism of swapping police personnel among its eight zones. The idea is to increase effectiveness of concentrated action and special drives and instill discipline among rule violators. A police officer said that lower rung cops used to develop friendly relations with locals including autorickshaw drivers due to working in one particular area for longer period. Such repeat offenders used have ‘connections’ within police rank and politicians. These persons are nuisance for the police staff as they always call their bosses whenever one tried to penalise them for violation of rules. This interference and pressure from politicians used to put pressure on on-duty staff affecting streamlining of traffic and issuance of challan. In many cases, autorickshaw drivers and illegal passenger transport vehicles get the benefits of ‘good relations’ with the police officials. This wa...