The Supreme Court’s e-committee, headed by Justice D Y Chandrachud, is tasked with integrating digital technologies in courts to enhance judicial productivity and efficiency. In the third phase of this project, the expert sub-committee has published a draft document to articulate its vision to put in place an interoperable digital architecture that, among other things, facilitates “easy” data-sharing among all pillars of the criminal justice system - the police, prosecutors, prisons and courts. The Interoperable Criminal Justice System (ICJS), launched in 2019, is set to be fully operational, and will replace the existing need-based physical exchange of information. It will integrate existing centralised data systems such as the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS), e-prisons and e-courts, promising “seamless exchange of live data” among these branches.
Critics have raised privacy concerns, given the absence of data protection laws, and questioned the implications of the data being housed in the home ministry for judicial independence. A neglected danger is that this “seamless exchange” will likely whitewash the biased and illegal process of data creation at the level of police stations, through the dual myths of objectivity and neutrality of technology.
Police stations across India have historically maintained registers of “habitual offenders” (HOs). Such registers today are primarily made up of persons who belong to Vimukta Janjatis, communities which had been criminalised by the British through the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871. The caste system offered colonial authorities the rationale to identify HOs. Police branding of communities as HOs resulted in extensive surveillance and intrusive policing as a form of daily existence.
However, given that the system cannot yet “flow freely”, police have to officially submit these records before the courts, giving the accused the right to challenge the correctness of the record. But an interoperable system creates potential for this information to be used to the detriment of accused persons without their knowledge. The e-committee’s vision to integrate all existing data systems to make ICJS one expansive centralised data system would essentially feed and sustain the myth of criminality of a “habitual offender”.
