Law Minister Gahlot addresses meeting on expediting criminal case trials using API

New Delhi: In a proactive endeavor to expedite criminal case trials, Delhi Law, Justice & Legislative Affairs Minister Kailash Gahlot on Friday presided over a critical meeting to address the issue of enabling API access to Forensic Science Laboratories (FSLs) findings on the ICJS portal. The conference was attended by the Director of the Forensic Science Laboratory, the Director of Prosecution, the Delhi High Court's Standing Counsel (Criminal), and senior officials from the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

The National Informatics Centre (NIC) experts demonstrated a complete presentation on the Interoperable Criminal Justice System (ICJS) at the meeting. This presentation shed light on the potential of the ICJS to dramatically improve the prosecution's capacity to quickly dispose of cases in court. During the discussion, it was suggested that this cutting-edge ICJS portal be made available to the High Court's Standing Counsel, Additional Standing Counsel, and Additional Public Prosecutors in order for them to easily access information such as chargesheets, facilitating the efficient handling of various court applications.

The Director of FSL indicated that in many situations, despite the drafting of FSL reports, they are not collected on time or are not given to the court on time by the IOs. The Law Minister underlined that FSL should post the report to the ICJS portal so that all stakeholders can benefit. The reports will be available to the court, as well as the prosecuting agencies in district and high courts.

Gehlot also requested that the Director of Prosecution (DoP) submit the data of cases that are awaiting trial solely due to a lack of FSL Reports, so that FSL might expedite the creation of reports in those cases.