Firozabad Police in Uttar Pradesh has launched a “Police Complaint on Block Chain” Web portal to help the public register all types of complaints to the police. This Web portal has been built on the Polygon Blockchain.
It seems to be the first of many similar projects for the police and other departments of various state governments.
Ankur Rakhi Sinha, founder of Airchains (airchain.io) while talking exclusively to Outlook Money said that UP Police will Blockchain-based portal will also track complaints related to encroachments.
"We are working on multiple projects, including the Chhattisgarh government's 'On Green Carbon' projects. We are also working with Delhi Police, but right now, we cannot share the details," Sinha says.
He also revealed that his company Airchains is also working with West Bengal and Assam governments.
"There are lots of issues in Assam in terms of land after the NRC issue. We are coming up with land mutation on Blockchains," Sinha told Outlook Money.
Firozabad Police Project
Ashish Tiwari, SSP, Firozabad Police, explained the benefit of registering complaints on the Blockchain.
"The benefit of using Blockchain is that the complaints registered on it can't be tampered with as data recorded is immutable and transparent," he says.
"Using the emerging technologies of Blockchain, a pilot portal, policecomplaintonblockchain.in, has been launched which is free of cost, and dedicated to the city," he adds.
Blockchain is a special kind of Distributed Digital Ledger Network. In this, obe can store any kind of data. The information is stored in blocks, and each block is made up of three sections.
In the first section, data is stored in the form of information. The second section contains the hash of the block. You can also call it the fingerprint of the block. With the help of hash, you can easily identify different blocks. Similarly, all the blocks are interconnected on a decentralised distributed network.
This project will directly assist in court proceedings, too.
"Blockchain covers three factors, namely, trust, transparency, and validation. Here, multiple stakeholders exist, the Web portal that you see, the police station, and, lasy, the higher officers assigned to the case. If only one validator from them will be there the case will stay active. So, this will directly assist in court proceedings, too. Multiple aspects are there, which will validate the case," says Sinha.
Arpit Sharma, vice president, Enterprises for Polygon, the man behind the project from Polygon told Outlook Money that as a technology, Blockchain has immense potential to improve efficiency and transparency.
How Will It Help Prevent Tampering FIRs?
According to Firozabad Police, many shortcomings have been removed in this new solution. This will not allow data to be changed, and/or tampered with after being fed into the Blockchain. All these shortcomings have been removed from this portal.
Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder - Polygon Technology said that with a first information report (FIR) going on the Blockchain, especially if people can get the online platform to file these with their identity, no lower-level officer can deny the existence of the FIR. This could be a gamechanger in ensuring the right to justice.
FIRs are typically handwritten and can be manipulated and tampered with. A Blockchain-based complaint system will ensure the authenticity, verifiability, as well as the secure management of complaints.
Says Sharat Chandra co-founder of India Blockchain Forum: "Blockchain technology brings encryption to the FIRs, and a hash of the FIR can be stored on the distributed ledger, thus creating a single source of truth."
Purushottam Anand, founder of Crypto Legal says: "The manner and method of handling complaints by the police have been questioned by the courts in many cases. There have been reported instances of the police not accepting the complaint, denying to have received the complaint, subsequently tampering with the original complaint, or even insisting to get the signature of the complainant on a blank page."
