Understanding India Criminal Record Retrieval

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INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL RECORDS

A Guide to Understanding Your India Searches

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The Background Investigator StraightLine International Reprint from January 2008 Press Release and February 2008 edition of The Background Investigator

Criminal Records History Retrieval - India What You Need To Know Briefly Karnataka is a state in India. Its capital city is Bangalore. Karnataka is divided into Districts (similar to U.S. counties).

Criminal records are available to the public at many levels.

Police The most basic search is the local police station. There are more than 40 police stations throughout Bangalore.

Each police station keeps its own records. They report information to the Bangalore City Police.

India's researchers use the local police as their source of information. They determine which station to check by comparing addresses. There is no charge from the local police for this service. Turnaround times vary based on the availability of staff at that station.

The next level is the City Police. They keep records reported by all the local police stations in the city. These records are available to the public.

The Bangalore City Police charge Rs200 (about US$5) for this city wide search. Turnaround time is about two weeks. The results include all records for the city of Bangalore.

Every district has a State Police District Police Department. The District and State level police records are held by the State Police.

These records are not available to the public.

Courts Each state has a similar court structure, i.e., a High Court, District Courts, and Magistrate Courts.

Cases heard at the District Court are comparable in the U.S. as felonies and serious misdemeanors.

The court records are computerised. The records are controlled by each state's High Court. The NIC (National Informatics Centre) based in New Delhi controls the computerisation of these records.

All State court records are centralized at the High Court. Computerisation has made this possible. Ideally, one could search all District and Magistrate Court cases at the State (High Court) level.

Due to a current NIC hardware glitch this search is not possible so each District or Magistrate Court needs to be individually searched. The NIC is working on the hardware glitch and a statewide search will be possible in the near future.

Comparison The differences between police searches and court searches are glaring.

Local police department searches focus on arrests made at that police station only. The prosecution of cases from the local police are heard at a Magistrate Court or District Court. Each Magistrate Court hears cases from several or more local police stations. Therefore magistrate court cases cover a wider area than local police and are preferable.

City police department searches focus on arrests made in that city only. Since magistrate courts cover only a slice of a city (or District) city police searches are favorable over a magistrate court search as they cover a wider area.

District Court cases cover all cities in the District. They would include all cases of the type most favorable to U.S. pre-employment screening standards. District court cases cover a wider area than city police thereby making this the most preferred search.

Missing Hits In India?

Recently at the First Annual Worldwide Screeners’ Conference in India a questioned was posed to the local researchers in attendance: “Has anyone of you gotten any hits?”

The answers were similar in this respect: All concluded that because they were doing searches at the local police level that it was too limited and did not include the fact that an offense might have occurred outside of the applicant’s residency.

Some mentioned the fact they were concerned that not all police matters were recorded and therefore could not efficiently present a complete profile.

None used the City Police or the Courts for their research.