Police Complaint Management System using Blockchain Technology

Abstract

The criminal activities in India are increasing at a rapid rate. Many of these activities go unreported. Even after having an online portal for the police for storing FIRs and NCRs, most of the FIRs are handwritten as a traditional practice. In most of the cases, the complainant has to be present in the police station to file a cognizable offense. An effective system for e-governance was started in 2009 named Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) for the entire country. However, it is a centralized system for a particular state. Thus there is a need for a completely decentralized system for assuring that there is no central point of failure in the system and complaints are managed securely protected from unauthorized access. Our aim is to propose a blockchain-based solution to manage complaints against both cognizable and non-cognizable offenses. The FIR filed by the police will be encrypted, stored in the IPFS and hash is added to the blockchain network. If the police decide not to file the FIR under pressure or deny receiving any complaint, then the complainant will have strong proof against him/her as the complaint along with its timestamp was stored on the blockchain network. Having all the records stored in an immutable database would remove any chances of the FIR/NCR being tampered and going unnoticed.