India's first cyber forensic lab set up in Tripura

The lab, established at the Tripura High Court will provide court case related information.

"From the CFL, automatic SMS alert would go to both lawyers and the litigant about the fate of the court case. If any lawyer or the petitioner remains absent on the day of trial, the SMS alert would go to all concerned," a law department official told IANS.

Supreme Court judge Justice Madan B. Lokur, who was earlier the chief justice of the Gauhati High Court, inaugurated the CFL on Sunday.

"We want decentralisation of legal services across the country. It is difficult to control everything from Delhi. High courts in the states would look after the lower courts to dispose the pending cases in the quickest possible time," Lokur said.

"A National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG) is being developed under the Supreme Court's supervision. All information about legal services, court cases and judicial actions would be available from the NJDG," Lokur said.

The NJDG would be fully operational by January 2014.

"So far, 13,000 judicial officers, including judges, have been trained about the e-court system and to equip them with the ongoing modernisation of legal services. Several thousand judicial officers would be given training about this new system," Lokur said.

To conduct an online trial, video conferencing systems are being expanded across the country, he said.

"Under this system, any judge or lawyer sitting in the court can talk to the accused lodged in jails".

Lokur first introduced the e-court programme in India when he was a judge in the Delhi High Court. He was a pioneer in introducing video conferencing systems between the Delhi High Court and Tihar jail in 2007.

Of the 620 district courts in India, 140 have created their own websites to provide case related information, he said.

"All e-court schemes would help judges take appropriate action for quick disposal of pending cases in various courts," he said.

"With this new system of trial and administrative works, the litigants will be immensely benefited. It will save both time and money to get quick justice and prompt disposal of cases," Lokur added.

Tripura High Court Chief Justice Deepak Gupta and Justice Subhashish Talapatra also spoke about the lab.

Separate high courts were set up in Tripura, Meghalaya and Manipur in March.

The seven northeastern states - Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh - were earlier under the Gauhati High Court with benches in the state capitals. Sikkim had a separate high court.