The nation's different federal and state prosecution agencies tasked with upholding anti-drugs legislation have access to a first-of-its-kind database of arrested drug offenders, according to officials.
The Narcotics Control Bureau created the portal, known as NIDAAN or the National Integrated Database on Arrested Narco-offenders (NCB).
It is a component of the NCORD platform, which was introduced on July 30 in Chandigarh by Union Home Minister Amit Shah as part of a national conference on "Drug trafficking and national security."
According to a senior officer, the inter-operable criminal justice system (ICJS) and the e-Prisons repository are where the NIDAAN platform gets its data from. It is also planned to combine the platform with the crime and criminal tracking network system, or CCTNS, in the future.
Using a single platform, the ICJS, a Supreme Court e-committee effort, enables smooth data and information transfer across the many components of the criminal justice system, including courts, police, jails, and forensic science labs.
According to NCB Director General S N Pradhan, "NIDAAN is a one-stop solution for all narcotics offenders' associated data and will enable investigative agencies as an effective tool to connect the dots when exploring narcotics crimes."
According to him, the purpose of building such a site was to increase the capacity of all law enforcement organizations fighting drug offenses.
Data on those who have been detained and imprisoned on drug-related charges as well as those "directly or indirectly involved in the produce, manufacture, possession, selling, purchase, transport, warehousing, usage, consumption, interstate import and export, import into India, export from India, or transhipment of any narcotics or psychotropic substance" are kept on file by NIDAAN. Any agency can look for the criminal history, personal information, fingerprints, court cases, appeals made, etc. of a drug offender from any part of the nation in accordance with the blueprint created for the operation and usage of the portal.
According to a senior officer, organizations that already have login credentials for the ICJS site can use those to access NIDAAN. Alternatively, organizations can request the login ID and password from the CCTNS administrator.
Agencies can also use a unique feature dubbed "criminal network" on the platform, which includes ties to additional crimes committed by an accused person, related police FIRs, and those who visited them in jail, the officer said.
The NCORD's NIDAAN platform was proposed during a national drug summit in Delhi in December of last year, which was presided over by Home Minister Shah.
A dedicated anti-narcotics task force (ANTF) that can also serve as the NCORD secretariat at the state level was one of the other measures Shah discussed during the meeting to strengthen the coordination mechanism on drug-related issues, according to the statement.
The minister also gave the agencies instructions to "take some important measures" like "creating a national NCORD portal, of which NIDAAN is a part, constituting inter-ministerial standing committees (IMCs) to develop effective policies with regard to dual use prescription drugs and precursors, raising a national narco-canine pool, and establishing drug de-addiction centers in all prisons of the 272 most drug-affected districts, etc."
