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In pursuance of a path-breaking order by a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court in December last, the Delhi Police are gearing up to upload First Information Reports on the Internet within 24 hours to facilitate supply of their copies to the accused or any person connected with the case. As directed, the FIR copies will be made available online by February 1. It is learnt that the police are at present working out the modalities for implementation of the court order. They are, however, yet to decide where exactly the FIRs will be posted and through what mechanism as the Cyber Highway project under which the police stations are to be interconnected is yet to be implemented. It could be either through a link on the Delhi Police official website or a separate one. Discussions in this regard are under way. Whatever the modalities, if the FIRs are made public through the Internet, even the complainants who on several occasions struggle to get a copy of the FIR would have quick access to it through the Internet.

Industrialist Ratan Tata on Thursday accused the government of adopting a "lackadaisical" manner in protecting the right to privacy, citing his case as an apt example. "Today my concern is that government is not giving serious consideration and attention to the issue. There may be other CDs which can be leaked and brought into public domain. There is a lackadaisical approach on the part of the government," senior Advocate Harish Salve, appearing for Tata in the Supreme Court, contended. Tata's concerns prompted the Bench of Justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly to remark that though the government " have the right to tap but they also have the duty to protect it and ensure that it is not leaked". "They have to safeguard it (the tapes) effectively. In the fast-changing time and developing technology, privacy is virtually disappearing and is being diluted," the court observed.

Empowering the investigating agencies, the Delhi High Court on Friday ruled that the fingerprints or specimen handwriting of an accused taken by an Investigating Officer during probe into a case was admissible as evidence even though a permission from a magistrate was not taken.

With India planning a huge database of 1.5 crore criminals for matching with the hand or face sample of an accused, the criminals or terror mongers will find it much tougher to hide. A fingerprint or a face in a CCTV shot captured from a crime or terror scene anywhere in India would lead the law-enforcing authorities straight to the culprit at the click of a button. The home ministry is working on an ambitious project to collect the fingerprints, palm prints, faces and iris samples of all the arrested and convicted persons in the country and store these in a central database. This biometric data will be accessible to all the police units across the country for getting real-time results on the identity of a suspect. Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/home-ministry-plans-national-database-on-criminals/1/157679.html