Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing the inaugural session of the 90th Interpol General Assembly on 18 October 2022, made the following pertinent and relevant observation: “Terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking, poaching, and organized crime. The pace of changes of these dangers are faster than earlier. When threats are global, the response cannot be just local! It is high time that the world comes together to defeat these threats.” While addressing the closing session of the 90th Interpol General Assembly on 21 October 2022, Union Home Minister, Amit Shah remarked: “During this period characterized by a revolution in data and information, the nature of crime and criminals have changed.

Today crime has become borderless, and if we want to stop this kind of crime and these criminals, we all have to think beyond conventional geographic borders.” In pursuance of the PM’s and the HM’s vision, and exhortations as above, the Central Bureau of Investigation relentlessly worked on this, and thus it was befitting that Mr Amit Shah, launched the Bharatpol online portal of the CBI on 7 January 2025. Bharatpol is an acronym for Broadcast Hub for Assistance and Real Time Action against Transnational crimes via international Police cooperation. It is an online portal accessible through the official website of the CBI, and it has been developed to address the issue of real time assistance to all state police and other central investigating agencies, in the investigation of crimes having international ramifications.

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This is a path breaking effort by the CBI, which will go a long way to expedite international assistance to the investigating officers across the country, who, most of the time, find it difficult and cumbersome to seek international assistance quickly, in complicated cases having transnational overtones. CBI is the National Central Bureau (NCB-New Delhi) for Interpol in India, and it is the designated authority for facilitating international cooperation in criminal matters and coordinates these efforts through the NCBs of other countries. Within the country, it operates through Interpol Liaison Officers (ILOs), and the Unit Officers (UOs) in the states and other organizations dealing with investigation. Communication between these officers and the CBI used to happen through normal channels of official communications like mails, letters, etc. which caused delays leading to several complications, apart from loss of faith of the complainants and the victims in the investigating agencies. This visionary and innovative effort will put to rest such adversities and will give real time assistance to all the investigating officers across the country. Bharatpol works on five modules, namely, Connect, Interpol Notices, Interpol References, Broadcast, and Resources. While the connect module will connect all the law enforcement agencies with the CBI on a single platform, the Interpol Notices module will facilitate the Law Enforcement Agencies in transmission of requests for various categories of Interpol notices.

Interpol Reference module will facilitate expeditious international assistance to LEAs for investigation abroad; the Broadcast module will transmit the request for assistance of foreign police agencies for action or information, and the Resources module will provide access to relevant documents, and will also serve as a capacity building tool. While the ordinary citizen is constantly under the threat of transnational crimes, like cyberattacks involving financial crimes which robs them off their hard-earned money (cyber arrests, extortion, impersonation, cryptocurrency frauds, and other financial crimes), investigation of these has become very difficult, because in most cases the criminals are situated abroad, and the proceeds of crime flow outside India quickly, making retrieval almost impossible. Moreover, despite bilateral treaties like Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties, Extradition Treaties, or Letter Rogatories, and the existing international cooperation framework, the procedural delays are so prolonged that not only complainants, but even the agencies get exasperated.

So, when delays are cut to a substantial size by reducing the time of completing the procedures, it is expected that it will give a lot of satisfaction to the investigating agencies, especially the State Police organizations. In addition to investigations, large numbers of requests for operational matters, like arrest/ detention of fugitives, conduct of raids etc., are also exchanged between the countries through Interpol. In this also, except for some special attention cases wherein officers at higher levels take a personal interest, delays of moving through the nodal agency, in our case CBI, caused lots of heartburn on both sides. With Bharatpol in place, this will also be taken care of very well. Interpol assistance is sought and executed mainly through various notices, and this portal will ensure their rapid, structured, and secure transmission to law enforcement agencies.

Colours of the notice denote the purpose, like Red for wanted persons, Yellow for missing persons, Blue for additional information, Black for unidentified bodies, Green for warnings and intelligence, Orange for imminent threat, Purple for modus operandi, and finally, Interpol-UN Security Council Special notice for groups and individuals subject to UN sanctions. Bharatpol will make the issuance and dissemination of these notices for cooperation easier and faster.

This portal is not limited for the professional work as enumerated above but will also serve as a great centre for capacity building of law enforcement officials, in as much as that it will serve as a repository of training and capacity building material for investigating officers who deal with cases having international ramifications. It will also empower investigators with the latest tools and techniques in international cooperation in policing. In a nutshell, Bharatpol has been designed keeping in mind the future challenges in policing and will be a game changer for the law enforcement agencies.

(The writer, a retired IPS officer, has served in various capacities including as Commissioner of Delhi Police, DG-BSF, DG-NCB, DG-BCAS and Special Director, CBI)