New Delhi: Outlining the limitations of India’s criminal laws in dealing with crimes prevalent in today’s age, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw urged a gathering of officers from the country’s security establishment to collaborate more with startups, industry and academia.
Additionally, he advocated for collaboration with IITs, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Department of Telecommunications to enhance the efficiency of investigating agencies.
The minister for Railways, Information and Broadcasting, and Electronics & Information Technology, Vaishnaw was delivering this year’s D.P. Kohli Memorial Lecture organised by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Kohli was founder-director of the CBI and served as the agency’s chief for a little more than five years between 1963 and 1968. The CBI organises a lecture each year in his name on 1 April, its foundation anniversary.
“CBI and its great team should look for more collaboration. As we take up this journey for Viksit Bharat, I would suggest that we should collaborate with startups, we should collaborate with industry and academia,” Vaishnaw said in his address attended by the chiefs and officials of all central intelligence and investigating agencies. “We can create technological solutions. Because law alone will not be sufficient for tackling the crimes in the new age. We will need a techno-legal approach,” he added.
Vaishnaw also requested the heads of agencies to “create state-of-the-art cyber forensic labs by partnering with various institutes”.
“I also request that between MeitY, DoTi, Department of Science and Technology and investigating agencies we create structures and institutions which help in developing these technologies,” he added.
Delivering an opening address, CBI Director Praveen Sood also shared data on the performance of the agency. A total of 111 cases were referred to the agency by constitutional courts last year, he said.
Reiterating the CBI’s role as primarily an anti-corruption agency, Sood said the number of cases registered under categories of trap proceedings and disproportionate assets rose to 276, which he said was a “steep” surge from five years ago. Overall, the agency registered a total of 502 anti-corruption cases in 2024, Sood said, adding that the agency has got “appreciation and eyeballs” for dealing with complicated cases such as the RG Kar rape and murder case and NEET and NET paper leak cases, among others.
He added that the CBI has taken steps to deal with long-standing issues of delays and pendency of cases. “We can’t take pride only in the registration of cases. CBI has always been faulted for delays and pendency,” he said.
“We disposed off a record number of 10,466 cases against an inflow of 836 cases thereby bringing the pendency to an all-time low of 970 cases. Our conviction rate has been around 70 percent,” Sood added.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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