Knowing how police stations function and what are the liabilities of police personnel as well as the rights of citizens is now just a click away with the launch of a Virtual Police Station (VPS) here on Tuesday.
The VPS, developed by international NGO Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative to “demystify” the police station and acquaint the public with the functioning of a police station without visiting it physically, was launched here on Tuesday.
The VPS is first-of-its kind training tool to acquaint the public with the functio-ning of a police station thr-ough the click of a mouse.
It allows the police and public to enter every room of a computerised police station to explore and learn the key procedures such as arrest, registration of complaints of sexual assault, registration of FIRs and more.
“It is very important to make the functioning of police stations comprehensible for general public. Everybody fears approaching the police, they should no how they should go ahead with it and how are the police personnel supposed to behave with them,” former IPS officer Kiran Bedi said at the launch.
Ms Bedi also suggested development of the tool in form of a mobile application to increase its reach and accessibility. Abha Singhal Joshi, lawyer and faculty at National Police Academy, said, “Lack of training methodology for those entering the police force is abysmal. Such kind of a tool is required to enable the police personnel in not just developing a synthesis between spirit and letter of law but sysntheis with real time situations when they actually work at police stations.”
In the Virtual Police Station, clicking on various icons of the members of police and public, or objects such as registers and phones, prompts a video and text box to open that explains these key procedures, and seminal resources such as case law and legislation are provided for even deeper learning.
The VPS will initially be available in Hindi and En-glish, however, CHRI plans to dub it in other Indian languages too.
