Walk into a Hyderabad police station speaking only Bengali, Tamil or Marathi, and until recently, getting your complaint accurately recorded was a frustrating, often exhausting ordeal. That changes now.
Hyderabad City Police on Saturday launched AI CopWriter, India’s first AI-powered mobile app that enables officers to record, transcribe, and translate complaints in 10 major Indian languages in real time at police stations. The app was unveiled by Hyderabad Police Commissioner VC Sajjanar at TGICCC in Banjara Hills.
How It Works
The idea is straightforward but the technology behind it is significant. A citizen can lodge a complaint in their mother tongue, and the app transcribes and translates the spoken words into a complete FIR within seconds. Officers no longer need to fumble through translations or rely on whoever happens to speak the complainant’s language.
The app supports 10 Indian languages with auto-detection, works on both iOS and Android, and offers transcribe and translate modes. It identifies multiple speakers, updates output every five seconds, and maintains a searchable archive by FIR number or name.
Every document it generates is designed to be legally sound. Each exported PDF automatically includes the FIR number, names of the complainant and accused, the recording officer’s name and badge ID, police station details, and relevant sections of law — ensuring full attribution and record integrity. Records are exported as tamper-evident PDFs.
Why It Matters
India is a country of staggering linguistic diversity, and Hyderabad — with its large migrant population from across the country — reflects that complexity every day. For a labourer from West Bengal or a domestic worker from Tamil Nadu, filing a police complaint has often meant depending on strangers to translate, or worse, having their account distorted in the process.
The app aims to make police services more accessible to all, including migrants and non-Telugu speakers, reducing the time taken to file complaints from hours to seconds while improving record accuracy. Officials noted that verbatim capture of statements would enhance the quality of investigations and case outcomes.
The app will be rolled out across more than 80 police stations in the city and is expected to reduce dependence on human interpreters while standardising record-keeping across units.
Part of a Larger AI Push
AI CopWriter isn’t a standalone experiment — it’s the latest piece of a deliberate AI-first strategy by Hyderabad Police. The department already uses C-Mitra for drafting cybercrime complaints, an AI system for duty allocation of City Armed Reserve personnel to ensure transparent and unbiased postings, and SOCEYE — an AI platform for monitoring online content and identifying narratives that threaten public order or women’s safety.
AI CopWriter was developed with technical assistance from Bluecloud Softech Solutions and intern Chandu, in collaboration with the IT cell of Hyderabad City Police.
Commissioner Sajjanar summed up the intent plainly: “Language should never stand between a citizen and justice.”
Source: PTI