All 23 police stations under the Visakhapatnam Police Commissionerate are likely to get e-Malkhana, a scientific method of storing property and evidence recovered from crime scenes, by June. In some police stations like Kancharapalem Police Station (KPS), work has started for inauguration by the end of this month, while in others they will be ready by next month.
KPS Circle Inspector S Vijay Kumar said, “We have almost completed the infrastructure work of the e-Malkhana. We are following the instructions of Police Commissioner CM Trivikram Verma and it is likely to be opened in next one week.
The facility was first launched in July 2021 at Narsipatnam police station (presently in Anakapalle district) by Tuhin Sinha, the then ASP of Narsipatnam, who is now SP of Alluri Sitarama Raju district.
As far as cities are concerned, Visakhapatnam will be the first city in Andhra Pradesh to have such a facility. However, in rural areas, it was already present in Narsipatnam,” said a police officer.
According to police officials, earlier the recovered properties and evidence were kept in store rooms and were difficult to locate, especially for the new Station House Officer who takes charge. To solve this problem, with the help of a software company, the police prepared an e-malkhana to store the evidence.
The seized property and the evidence collected from the crime scene may be kept in cardboard boxes of standard size, which will be marked with other details. A dynamic QR code will be generated and pasted on the box. A dedicated website has also been hosted and all the details related to the case and property will be uploaded. One has only to scan the code to get the details.
One does not need to find the box, as one can go to the website and get the number and take out the box for further reference. As per the court order, the boxes will be kept till the final disposal. By using specific login credentials, the data can be accessed and analyzed by all senior executives using their own login credentials, thus allowing for effective supervision.
A three-part data entry is done for each asset and comprehensive data fields are provided in all the three parts, such as asset description, chain of custody and disposal of the asset. Thus, it allows complete information about the seized property to be accessed at a single place. Apart from this, it will also be easy to trace the assets pending for disposal and those already disposed of.
Whenever any new information is added with respect to a property, that information also appears when the QR code is scanned, without the need to create a new QR code and paste it on the box again.
For easy searching, each rack and box is numbered and the website provides a dashboard for easy reference and search.