Dist jail, court soon to be linked through video conferencing

KANPUR: Soon it will be possible to hold trials of criminals without having to take them to court, courtsey video conferencing between the District Jail Kanpur and Kanpur Nagar Court. The facility will be introduced in a couple of months. This pilotproject of the state government has been prepared with the view to do away withthe necessity of transporting hardened criminals to court for every hearing.This, in turn, will save criminals from becoming a target of rival gangs andeven lawyers on occasions. According to a state government official, the projectis being executed by the UP prison department in seven districts of the state,and judiciary is assisting in its execution. According to jailsuperintendent, Kanpur jail, RN Pandey, a room has already been prepared forvideo conferencing and a room has also been set up at the Kanpur nagar court."Now, we are waiting for the installation of the required equipments," he said.The technical aspect is being supervised by a committee headed by two high court judges, Justice A Mateen and Justice Arora. Other members of the committee are the IG police, chief of national information centre and constructing agency, Nirman Nigam. The committee has convened at least three meetings so far with the heads of the computer wing of each district selected for the pilot project."Right now the committee is working withtechnical experts to examine the performance of broadband, wireless (Swan) andlease-line. Testing is being done to determine which transmission system givesbetter audio and video results," he informed. Distance is another major factorin testing as distance at each centre between the jail and the district court isdifferent. Once a transmission line is finalised, it will be installed at allthe centres. It may be possible that different transmission lines are installedat different centres. To make the project more perfect and viablefor maintaining law and order in the district, a video conferencing room willalso be set up at the Police Lines, he said.It may be mentioned herethat state government has selected seven districts namely Kanpur Nagar, Meerut,Ghaziabad, Mirzapur, Lucknow, Allahabad (Mau) and Varanasi for this project.According to sources, in Allahabad the project is at concluding stage while inVaranasi it will take some time as the jail is likely to be shifted to someother place. Therefore, it has been decided to suspend the execution of theproject till the jail is shifted to its new premises.