Top cops differ over registering FIR online

Even as CM Devendra Fadnavis announced on Wednesday that all police stations of Maharashtra will start registering a First Information Repot (FIR) online from January 1, the senior police officers from Navi Mumbai have come up with contradictory statements.

While additional commissioner of police VR Chauhan said that it will be implemented right from January 1, city police chief said that he is still not clear about it.

Speaking to HT, police commissioner Prabhat Ranjan said, “Online registration of an FIR is undoubtedly a very good system, but I have several questions in my mind about the entire procedure. When a person comes to a police station for registering an FIR, a police official can make some queries for clearing his or her doubts. Then the complainant has to sign on the FIR in front of that official. I don’t know if these things will be possible in the online system.”

“Registration of an FIR is a legal system and if it is done with fake a signature, then the concerned official would be prosecuted. Therefore, I am not saying that we are not ready for it, but I really don’t know how to go about it,” he added.

Additional commissioner Chauhan on the other hand said that the order will be implemented from January 1 itself. “We will start registering FIRs online from the first day of 2016. There is nothing much to say about it,” he said without explaining further.

A section of police officers however, believe that the online system may not be as simple as expected. A senior officer from city zone I said, “Many of our officials are not comfortable with computers. During bandobasts, all our officials have to be on road except for one or two. If that one or two official cannot register an FIR online, then it will create problems.”