Police stations to get e-connected to HC …….Shibu Thomas
Mumbai: A week after the Bombay high court asked the state to put its men in khaki on the information highway,the Maharashtra government on Thursday assured the HC that it would send details of cases to police stations through e-mail.
Public prosecutor Pandurang Pol said in the first phase,details of all 84 police stations in the city would be connected with the HC system.
As soon as a case is slated for hearing on a particular day,an auto generated e-mail will go out to the police station concerned, said Pol.This will ensure speedy dissemination of information. In the second phase,e-mail ids of all 1,000 police stations across the state will be incorporated in the system.
A division bench of Justice A M Khanwilkar and Justice A P Bhangale had sought a solution to the problem of police officials not being present during the hearing of cases related to their police stations.
At present,whenever the case is listed for hearing,the prosecutions office sends a communication in the form of a wireless message to the director-generals office,This message is then sent to the police stations concerned.This is time consuming and moreover,many a time,the police officers claim not to have received the message, said a prosecutor.
With instances of police officials failing to appear in the HC with details of cases going up,the judges asked the prosecution to adopt a new technology.Create e-mail accounts for every police station.It will ensure effortless communication, a judge said last week.
While Mumbai police stations will start getting such e-mails as early as next week,the system will be implemented across the state by February,2011.The success of the new mechanism will depend on how regularly the officials check their mail.But they will no longer be able to claim that they did not get the messages, said an advocate.The next hearing is on February 2011.