UP tops in prosecution under ICJS system

Lucknow, March 6 (SocialNews.XYZ) The Uttar Pradesh Police has bagged the first position for the second consecutive year for making highest entries related to prosecution under the Interoperable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) in the country.

The portal, managed by the Central government under Digital India Mission, ensures communication between the police department and the prosecution directorate under Inter-operable Criminal Justice System.

This enables transfer of data among courts, police, jails and forensic science laboratories which is aimed at providing timely justice to victims and their families.

ADG, prosecution, Ashutosh Pandey said that several strategies were being formulated at the higher level which helped UP police achieve the feat.

"We have made legal opinion mandatory at the charge sheet level, feeding and monitoring data about witnesses, while SOPs for important stages like charge framing, remand, bail cancellation, witness examination, hostile witness and final argument has been created," the officer said.

He said the selection and monitoring of strong cases having lesser number of witnesses, involvement of prosecutors from incidents of cases under the POCSO Act was ensured.

Pandey said that according to the figures available till February, Uttar Pradesh had 1,11,86,030 cases entered on the portal, followed by Madhya Pradesh (29,31,335 cases) and then Bihar, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh.

"In 2021, the conviction rate in Uttar Pradesh in cases related to crime against women was 59.1 per cent against the national average of 26.5 per cent," he said.

The officer added that the state also improved consistently in ensuring convictions.

In cases of rape, conviction was achieved in 671 cases in 2022 as compared to 177 in 2020. Likewise, 2,313 convictions were achieved under the POCSO Act as compared to 535 in 2020.

In cases of dowry death, kidnapping and sexual harassment, the conviction rate has gone up by 220 per cent, 475 per cent and 2075 per cent, respectively, in the last two years.

The efforts have also resulted in speedy trials. Last year, 34 people were convicted under the POCSO Act within a month of filing of the charge sheet.

In 2021, the number was just seven and the year before that, it was just five.

"The e-prosecution portal comes into play once police file a charge sheet in a case. Once the details of the case are uploaded, sending summons to production of witnesses is monitored through the platform," said Pandey.

ADG, law and order, Prashant Kumar said: "We have embarked on a futuristic strategy to evolve a better synergy between police, prison and prosecution through maximum use of technology to automate the criminal justice system to help the judiciary in expediting the trial leading to better convictions."

Source: IANS