IANS

Mumbai, Jan 29: Very soon, people in Maharashtra can lodge police complaints for all types of offences - ranging from robbery to murder - online.

Home Minister R.R. Patil told IANS Thursday that Maharashtra will be the first state in the country to offer such a facility to the people, from the big cities like Mumbai and Nagpur to the remotest of the 11,000 villages dotting the state.

Patil and senior police and civil officials watched a successful demonstration of the proposed e-complaints - the home minister even lodged a dummy test complaint with Tasgaon police station in his home village in Sangli.

"Next week, this will come up before the state cabinet for approval. After putting in place the relevant software and other issue, we plan to implement it in March," Patil said.

So far, of the 11,000 villages, over 4,000 are already online with broadband internet connections, and the rest are also being connected.

"The entire state will be able to avail the facility by 2012 as villages are being connected at a quick pace. It will be a trendsetter since this facility is not available in most parts of the world," Patil said.

An e-complaint link would be provided on the state goverment's official site, (www.maharashtra.gov.in) for the prospective complainant, he said.

At a click, it would connect to the relevant page and ask the complainant's name, mobile number, address, details of the police station concerned and so on.

After filling these up, the system would generate a confidential acknowledgement number and send it to the complainant's mobile number.

Within 24 hours, it would be verified either by a phone call from the police station or a personal visit by a constable to the complainant. Then, the complainant would be called to register the formal First Information Report (FIR) which is a legal requirement.

Patil - a lawyer himself - said that the FIR copy with the signature of the complainant and the police official would also be made available immediately to enable further legal procedures that may be required.

"With this, long queues for complaints would disappear from police stations, people will save a lot of time as they will be able to file complaints at their convenience and the stress on the police force will be greatly reduced," Patil said.

A major advantage would be that now officials cannot ignore or err on complaints since it will be visible to all the top bosses at a click.

"The zonal deputy commissioner of police, additional police commissioner, police commissioners, the director-general of police, the home department officials and even I shall have access to all the complaints filed anywhere in the state anytime," Patil said.

The service will be available at a nominal charge, Patil said. He also warned that those who lodge false or mischievous complaints would be dealt with strictly as per the laws.