Tele-Justice Bridges India's Courts and Jails

Business Week ^ | February 22, 2008, 7:04AM EST | Business Week

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Video conferencing is speeding up a slow judicial system, connecting judges, lawyers, and the accused while enhancing savings and security.

India has undertaken a nationwide project to connect jails and district courts across the country via a tele-justice or video conferencing system. With tele-justice, the accused can now be present in a court through a video link, established on ISDN lines, between the prison and the court.

Today, Indian states including Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Bihar have already introduced tele-justice. In Maharashtra, for instance, over 40 jails in and around Mumbai are connected to district level courts through video conferencing.

"For the national spread of tele-justice, we will see about 300 jails and 2,000 courts connected over video conferencing," Yugal Sharma, country manager for India and South Asia, Polycom (UK) India, told ZDNet Asia in an interview.

With tele-justice, prisoners no longer need to be transported to the courtroom to stand trial.

Polycom, a global player in unified collaborative communications, was engaged to deploy video conferencing equipment across various judiciaries and prisons in India. Andhra Pradesh was one of the first Indian states to introduce these electronic trails, connecting 15 district courts with prisons and installing 31 video endpoints.

"Our tele-conferencing systems allow judges, legal professionals, court officials, inmates and witnesses to seamlessly communicate face-to-face in real-time, as if they were in the same room," Sharma said. Today, Indian prisons alone contribute around 25 to 30 percent of Polycom's revenue generation.

Locking down cost, security benefits...