Blockchain driven Evidence Management System

Abstract

When a cognizable violation like murder, abduction, rape, theft, etc. is committed, a victim or someone acting on their behalf must submit an electronic first information report (e-FIR) to the police station. Due to the centralized nature of the e-FIR database, it is possible for the offense’s record to be hacked, and it is also possible for fake e-FIRs to be purposefully registered. Data transparency and integrity are therefore major issues with the e-FIR database. Indian government launched nation-wide Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) during 2009 and it is an efficient e-governance system. This paper provides a blockchain solution to handle the complaints given on both cognizable and non-cognizable complaints. Using real-world examples from previous events, the technology and security underlying the use of blockchain will be discussed. Police will file an e-FIR, which will be validated by the authorities, and on acceptance of the FIR, it will be encrypted and stored as a hash along with the timestamp and hash of the next block. Now, how blockchain makes it secure is that it doesn’t let anybody make changes to the FIR without proof of work and a vote of consensus in which a majority of the blockchain must agree to the change. The hash will be stored in smart contracts using Ethereum. Our findings demonstrate a trade-off between the number of transactions contained in a single block on the blockchain ledger and the security level of various hashing algorithms for the offence data.