Telangana Leads In Crime Tracking Network  

Hyderabad: Telangana government has almost completed Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS), a Centre's initiative on digitizing crime and records of criminals. Barring new police stations, the networking of all the police stations across the state has been completed by September 30. With this accomplishment, Telangana has emerged front runner in implementation of CCTNS in the country.

Telangana government has networked, except 92 new police stations, 709 police stations and equipped them with the CCTNS software provided by the Centre.

CCTNS is a comprehensive and integrated IT-enabled system to bringing over 14,000 police stations across the country onto an online platform. This will enable exchanging of information about criminals and details about crime immediately. The Centre in 2009 approved the CCTNS project, but works began in 2012. Then united AP was chosen as a model state to adopt CCTNS project.

The networking of police stations on experimental basis taken off in Cyberabad, Guntur, Chittoor and West Godavari districts.

The CCTNS will make police transparent and citizen-friendly by automating its works. Under the CCTNS, police will digitize crime and records of criminals to facilitate investigation and tracking. The police stations can share information online to expedite the investigation process.

The Centre is bearing the 90 percent cost (Rs 35.36 crore) of the project under the National e-Governance Plan, while state government has to contribute to the rest of the project. Case filing and FIR are done online using the Centre's software. In 2013, 60 FIRs registered online and the number significantly rose this year as 1,29,339 FIRs have been recorded online during the first nine months of 2016. Telangana police has also taken up computerizing all the old records also.