New Delhi: In the past few years, whenever a case was being heard in a court, it used to be a tough and time consuming process for Delhi Police personnel to search the concerned case property stored inside the malkhanas and pore over several registers.
Keeping in mind the difficulties entailing this process, the mission to digitise malkhanas was taken up, as a result of which case properties are now given a proper identity and packed with a barcode on the cover. Three police stations in South East Delhi have digitised their malkhanas, keeping with the spirit of e-governance.
According to police, Lajpat Nagar, Kalkaji and New Friends Colony are the three police stations where the 'e-malkhanas' are fully functioning.
Millennium Post visited the malkhana of Kalkaji police station, where case properties are stored on different racks and identification numbers are assigned to them.
A malkhana moharar, or in-charge, works on the computer, feeding necessary details of the different case properties.
"Using a software, we feed the photo with the case details, including FIR, and details of the case property which can be, for example, a liquor bottle or knife. They are properly packed and a barcode is given.
"If we require to see a case property, we just need to enter the details of the case and we instantly come to know in which drawer it is kept. The software also shows the investigating officer's name," said a senior police officer.
Personnel at the station also feed the dates of the proceedings of a particular case into the software, which, on the date of the case's hearing, gives a notification.
Earlier, the malkhana was not maintained in an organised order, as the records were maintained on registers in a haphazard manner.
"It would take several hours to search the case property in the malkhana. There would be more trouble when the in-charge of the malkhana would be transferred, as his replacement would take several months to learn the ropes. It was a time-taking process," the police official said.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (South East) Chinmoy Biswal said their target is to digitalise all malkhanas in the district by June.
"Digitisation is a part of the national e-governance and smart policing programme. It will help in the development of police system," said the DCP.
The brains behind the digitisation of malkhanas is Hareshwar V Swami, currently Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (South East).
Swami conceptualised the programmed first in Shahdara district and sources stated that the concept will be implemented in all the police stations across Delhi.
Sources, however, also said that a major roadblock in the process of digitisation is that many police stations in the Capital are running in temporary buildings, where digitisation is not possible.
Another major issue that the digitisation process faces involves large case properties, such as sofas and vehicles.
Usually, such objects kept outside the police station and if a barcode is placed on the vehicles, it could easily get washed away during rain.