Operation fast track

Little did he know that during his appointment as the president of the Rotary Club of Pune Riverside, Rohit Jerajani would participate in...

Little did he know that during his appointment as the president of the Rotary Club of Pune Riverside, Rohit Jerajani would participate in a project which would lead him to say, 8220;I have devoted myself to this work 8230;8221; On July 7, 1998, during a small ceremony marking the appointment of Jerajani as the president, the Deputy Commissioner of Police Crime Branch Ramrao Pawar spoke of the need to have Pune mapped digitally to help the police in solving crime. Even as he spoke, Jerajani says, 8220;A fellow Rotarian whispered to me on the dias itself that he would pay for the whole project.8221;

And that is how the Pune police came to have the city digitally mapped for them, complete with hotels, lodges, petrol pumps, accident prone spots, national highways, pager and mobile service towers, dams, the airport, ammunition factories, VIP routes, offices of communal sanghatanas, brothels and soon even speed breakers.

8220;At the touch of a button, the police can locate whatever they are looking for in the city,8221; says Jerajani. He explains that they simply need to type in a single word such as hospitals8217; and the map displaying all the hospitals in Pune will appear on the screen. A click of the mouse on a particular area will yield more specific location-information such as hospitals in Camp area alone. Through this, the police can now trace criminals on the run or closely watch potential trouble spots and move in, using the shortest route, without wasting time studying maps and information on paper.

During the presentation of the software to Police Commissioner K.K. Kashyap on April 28, the advantages of the map were demonstrated by tracing the events of the recent Ladkat murder case. 8220;We described how the ATamp;T mobile phone towers helped trace the route the criminals took. Criminals feel that by using a mobile phone, their location cannot be determined but actually it is very easy to do so,8221; says Jerajani.

System Research Institute, Pune, had already put forward a proposal to digitally map the city. With the funds now available, Jerajani and two assistants from the DCP8217;s office began to work on the details. 8220;We used the detailed police maps and the more accurate maps from the office of the Archaeological Survey of India to make these maps,8217; explains Jerajani. Once at the office of the System Research Institute, the maps were enlarged on the computer screen and the details were fed in 8211; category for example, place of worship, approach roads and distances. 8220;This project was supposed to take four months but it ended up taking 10 months. It took time to feed in all that data,8221; he laughs. Three copies of this software are available at the moment 8211; one each at the police computer room, the office of the Police Commissioner and one with Jerajani. 8220;An addition of a category on either side to the software, means all three programmes need be updated,8221; says Jerajani. This software is also available for the mediashould they need it but Jerajani stresses that this project has been created to essentially assist the police. For the person on the street, more relevant is the fact that simplified versions of these maps will be available on the Internet at puneriverside.com.

What this hi-tech project also means ultimately, is that the police of Pune city are going to be watching closely and crime can take a back seat.